Stanley Cup Tickets Fetching $2,000 or More

(NewsCore) - VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Ice hockey fans were paying US$2,000 or more for a chance to watch the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins compete for the Stanley Cup, FOXNews.com reported Monday.

Online ticket resellers said this year's final, particularly the games in Vancouver, were already fetching some of the highest prices ever seen, despite the fact that tickets had yet to officially go on sale to the general public.

The Canucks planned to released details Monday, while the Bruins were set to start sales Tuesday, but season ticket holders were already putting their seats for sale online with steep markups.

FanSnap, a US-based website that allows users to search several reselling websites at the same time, said the average ticket price for the Vancouver games was currently about US$1,900 and for Boston games, roughly US$1,100.

Online reseller StubHub, which allows ticket holders to list their seats and set their own prices, said tickets in Vancouver were selling for an average of US$970 on the site, and Boston games were going for around US$690.

"These are the priciest tickets we've seen for the Stanley Cup final in our company's history," according to Joellen Ferrer of StubHub, which launched in 2000 and was bought by eBay in 2007.

Ferrer said that last year, in the days leading up to the Chicago Blackhawks-Philadelphia Flyers series, tickets were selling for about US$150 less than they are now.

Christian Anderson of StubHub said the ballooning ticket prices came as a surprise, but he offered several reasons why they were so high, particularly for the games in Vancouver.

"Vancouver is obviously a hotbed of NHL fans, and it's drawing from a large area," he said. "It's also pulling in fans from the Seattle area and across Canada, so we're seeing huge ticket demand."

Anderson said users visiting his site to buy tickets for the Vancouver games were mostly in British Columbia, with some buyers coming from Alberta, Washington, California and Massachusetts.