The holy trinity of basketball; for Jesse Sandler, it's Lebron James, Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant.
"When I saw that the last game of the season was against Utah, I thought, hey Kobe might be retiring at the end of the season," said Sandler.
He paid $195 per ticket on Stub Hub, but when a few weeks later Bryant made it official that he'd be leaving the court forever, tickets appreciated nearly 1000%. That's when the Stub Hub seller, likely realizing he could make major profit, took back the tickets.
"I was so devastated, I was so upset," said Sandler.
Enter Overland Park's Tickets for Less.
"He was left without seats and was told that the market went way up and he could spend $6000 or so to get comparable tickets to the game," said Dan Rouen, Ticket for Less president.
When the Overland Park broker heard about Jesse's misfortune, its president flew out to Los Angeles to personally deliver four tickets worth thousands of dollars to the basketball fan, and it did it all free of charge.
"He looked like a really nice guy when we looked into him," Rouen said. "Normally we can't help someone, but being in the ticket industry, we actually had access to some tickets and wanted to help him."
In the process, the ticket broker showed sports fans across all 50 states what Midwestern hospitality is all about.
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Terra Hall can be reached at terra.hall@kshb.com.
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