Chalk up the Los Angeles Lakers as the latest professional sports organization to join the stratified ticket pricing revolution.  Wonderful stuff, really.

As reported by Greg Johnson of the LA Times:

The Lakers on Tuesday unveiled a ticket premium that will add as much as $55 to the cost of an admission to seven home games during the 2008-09 season against such top-flight competitors as the Celtics, Cavaliers and Mavericks.

The premium to be levied on individual Lakers tickets will range from $10 on a $35 seat to $55 for a $260 seat and be in effect for home games against Boston (Dec. 25), Cleveland (Jan. 19), San Antonio (Jan. 25), New Orleans (Feb. 20), Phoenix (Feb. 26), Dallas (March 15) and Houston (April 3).

The premium comes on the heels of an overall price increase of about 5.5% that the Lakers announced for individual game tickets following the 2008 NBA Finals. That price hike marked the third consecutive postseason increaseby the Lakers.

 

This has been largely a baseball-oriented phenomenon for a while, but it's grand to see hoops teams getting in on the action as well.  Back home in New York, the Mets have reached the point where they've all but dissolved the "Bronze" and "Value" games and turned as many series as possible into the upper echelon packages, thus allowing them another excuse to crank up prices for most games in addition to the standard annual increases. 

Of course, it's the smart business play for the franchise as the best games receive higher demand.  But fans get raked over the coals enough as is.  The last thing we need is one more premium to play.  This stuff gets me easily frustrated.