Eddie Cue, the Golden State Warriors, and the Valley Effect

Farhad Manjoo, writing for the New York Times:

Basketball has always been accommodative of celebrity culture — the small arena and the courtside seats make seeing and being seen one of the central perks of high-dollar tickets. In an earlier time, Jack Nicholson became a fixture at Lakers games, while the Knicks claimed Spike Lee and Woody Allen as all but official mascots.

Now, in Oakland, the Golden State Warriors have … Eddy Cue.

And:

With Silicon Valley just a short Tesla drive away from Oracle Arena, Mr. Cue is far from the only techie losing his mind over the Warriors. The team is owned by a coalition of tech investors, and on any given night, you will find a passel of executives, venture capitalists and other assorted billionaires cheering from the sidelines.

And:

Yet success has had its costs. Thanks to bandwagon fans like me, ticket prices have soared, leaving longtime ticket holders fuming. Gentrification has already begun, and it is bound to get worse. Soon the team will move to an exclusive new arena in San Francisco, abandoning its roots in an industrial area of Oakland.

The price of success. The Warriors are emblematic of the Valley Effect, where the moneyed move in and prices are driven up.

How do you preserve the fan base as the entry price rises? The problem for the Warriors resembles, in broad strokes, the problem of housing in the Bay Area. There is a finite supply of tickets to the games, and in an industry that produces astonishing wealth, there will always be enough people with enough money to pay nearly any price for tickets.

A very valley problem.