Ticket sales for Kaohsiung Steelers home games surged after last month’s announcement that former NBA sensation Jeremy Lin would join the struggling P.League+ team.
The Steelers, currently in last place in the six-team league with a 2-14 record, have three home games this month, hosting the Formosa Taishin Dreamers, the New Taipei Kings and the Dreamers again at Kaohsiung Fengshan Arena on Monday, Saturday next week and Feb. 12 respectively.
Tickets to the latter two games went on sale at noon on Monday and as of 2:15pm, the courtside seats for the contest on Saturday next week, priced at NT$3,500 each, and all other lower-level seats were sold out, as were many sections in the arena’s second deck.
Photo: CNA
The cheapest seats, in the arena’s third tier, are priced at NT$400 each.
In their first seven home games this season, the Steelers had an average attendance of 2,502 people per game, only 47.2 percent of the arena’s 5,300 seat capacity, the league’s Web site showed.
After the three home games, the team’s next home encounter would be on March 10, which could possibly drive up demand for tickets this month, even though the Steelers have yet to confirm when the Taiwanese-American player would make his debut.
Promotional material released on Friday for the Kaohsiung team’s home games this month featured Lin alongside guard Jerry Chen and Shawn Chou, Lin’s former teammate in China’s professional basketball league.
Lin did not appear in a post on the team’s Web site on Sunday.
Many fans question whether Lin could reverse the Steelers’ fortunes, given that the T1 League’s Taoyuan Leopards have been unable to win more than one game despite the addition of former NBA star Dwight Howard.
Kaohsiung finished fifth in the P.League+ last season with a 9-20 record. They have fallen further this season, four wins behind the 6-11 Dreamers in fifth place and 11 behind league leaders the Kings (13-4).
The league’s top four teams in the regular season standings advance to the playoffs.
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