We will be staying in LA for 3 nights as an extention to our March trip to Vegas and we will be in town for the Monday night Lakers v Orlando game.

There are only single seats available from Ticketmaster, and as we are Australian, we cannot buy our tickets from the Lakers Ticket Exchange. I have come across several agencies selling tix that can be purchased as 2 seats together and there is a huge price variation from one section to another.

My questions are....

Is there a more reputable/reliable agency to deal with, or are they all the same?

Are the upper sections with a side on view a better place to watch the game from, than the middle level at the end of the court? (The game is at the Staples Centre)

Should I pre-book parking, or would it be easy to find steet parking on a Monday night?

As the ticket pricing is obviously based on supply/demand, am I better off waiting till closer to the game or will the prices increase?

Any other advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

If it was me -- I'd book the single seats from ticketmaster ASAP. Sure you'd miss out on sitting together -- but you wouldn't pay an agency premium. Waiting til later won't help because that game will be at a bit of a premium since Orlando only plays once at Staples Center (well twice -- but the other game is vs. the Clippers)

Just find a place to meet up after the game (and maybe at half time) when you go in

Hi there shanek. Hope we will have another trip report.

Have you tried stubhub.com? Their office downtown LA is pretty conveniently located at 2nd/Figueroa (in a building I formerly worked in).

I thought the exchange shanek mentioned IS stubhub. But if not -- yes, Stubhub would be good.

Janisj you are wrong. Lakers Ticket Exchange is not stubhub.

okaaaay -- that's what I said -- if he didn't mean stubhub -- then yes, stubhub is good.

I've seen tickets on Stubhub. I will give them a go tonight. Thanks for your help.

Are the upper sections still OK viewing? It's about $100-150 for tickets up there, side on to the court, but $300+ for anything lower. It's mostly about the atmosphere but don't want to be watching insects bouncing a pea.

Sorry can't help...too rich for my blood. Bring binoculars!!

Good luck shank..

Razorgator is another ticket resale site. We have used them before with good results: www.razorgator.com

There is a seat viewer on the Staples Center website.
http://www.staplescenter.com/seatvie...age=basketball

I personally would not pay $100+ to sit in the 300 section. Those seats are waaay up there. However, if your intent is capturing the atmosphere of an NBA game, then it may be worth it to you. You could always just watch the game across the street on the big screen at LA Live.

As for parking, we always just park in one of the private lots on Figueroa, south of the SC. They are much easier to get in and out of than the official SC/Convention Center lots.

I suppose to understand my desire to see a game, you need to understand that SPORT, with travel is pretty much my main passion in life. I find any sporting contest captivating regadless of the result.

In June last year, I would have bought tickets to game 5 of the NBA finals series, in fact I had selected seats on the Ticket Exchange and entered in my card number to authorise a payment of almost $1000 for these seats, only to be told that because my credit card is not linked to a US zip code, that my transaction could not be accepted. It was a lot of money for me, but I was still dissapointed that I didn't get to spend it.

We watched the game in the ESPN Zone at Downtown Disney. My son, Joel, was almost the only Celtics fan amongst a sea of yellow and purple and his team went down in a blow-out. The rest in history. My feeling was at that time was if I ever get a chance to get to a game again, I would take it, and due to this trip that I have been gifted, the opportunity has presented itself much earlier than I could have imagined.

Thanks for all the advice. I'm off to compare razorgator with stubhub and will book some tickets. It sounds like the parking issue won't be a problem. I'm happy to park away from the centre and walk if it means I can get away quicker.

I just booked tickets on razorgator after comparing a few different agencies. For some reason, I couldn't get stubhub seats to load after several attempts on 2 different computers with different firewall settings.

I got section 301 row 4 seats for $120 each, but after international delivery charges etc, it cost me just over $300 for my 2 tickets. Money well spent IMHO. We will just have to eat a McDonalds that night to compensate!!!!

I can relate as we used Razorgator for World Cup semi-final tickets in 2006 at a very pretty penny but oh so worth it.

FWI: There are really good bacon-wrapped hot dogs with grilled vegetables for offer (about $3) on the sidewalks outside the stadium. You should fill up on those, because sandwiches inside run about $10 each. Imported beer is about $12, last I remember. There is also a McDonald's inside, priced about double the McD's elsewhere.

Have a great time!

BTW, I really enjoyed your previous trip report and am looking forward to this one.

Enjoy it. And lets go, well neither...being a Celtics fan, I can't cheer for either team.

I got my tickets a few days ago. The service from Razorgator was very prompt and professional.

The face value of my $125 plus $20 handling fee tickets are $42 each. Quite a healthy mark-up, but I suppose that a game like this creates a "sellers market".

Selling tickets in this fashion is not legal in Australia and referred to as "scalping". If you cannot use tickets that you have purchased, they have to be sold at face value, however this is not always strictly enforced and some agencies get away with "packaging" tickets with hospitality events to disguse a mark-up, particularly for our AFL Grand Final.

I think I like your system better, but would like to know a bit more about the mechanics of it. It would look to be quite a lucrative business to buy season tickets and then sell off individual games. Is this what happens?

Yes, shanek, I've never understood this. Scalping the tickets at a mark-up outside the stadium is illegal in California, but selling online for a profit is okay. Also, every state has different rules.

I'm sure it is quite a lucrative business to sell off your season tickets for large profits. However, there is a waiting list and a large up-front outlay of cash to purchase all 40+ home games, especially in the lower sections.

DH was at a Laker game last week, as a guest of a friend whose employer had corporate seats. The face value of his ticket was around $235 (the company had 4 of them), and the stadium was sold out. It's moments like this when the "what recession?" question comes into play.