Kobe Bryant’s jersey retirement ceremony on Monday was the hottest ticket of the NBA season, as people forked over thousands of dollars to watch the Mamba’s numbers 8 and 24 get hung in the rafters at Staples Center.
If people were willing to put up a few thousand for a ticket, what was another couple hundred for some merchandise, right? That’s what AEG, the owner of Staples Center, and Nike capitalized on, putting out an incredible amount of Kobe merchandise for the occasion, from special shirts to hats (18 of them) to all manner of collectors items.
For those in the building, the excitement of the night was enough to drive $616,000 worth of merchandise sales in Staples Center on Monday night alone, per ESPN’s Darren Rovell. While that is an impressive number, the total sales from AEG from other locations around L.A. and online were even higher, and the final figure is a suspiciously perfect number: $824,000.
AEG says they did $824,000 in Kobe number retirement merchandise at their four sales locations on Monday. Yes, 8-24-THOUSAND. pic.twitter.com/e3AFkGnFd0
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) December 20, 2017
On the night when the numbers 8 and 24 were retired and both halves of his career were celebrated, AEG just so happened to sell that exact amount of merchandise. As the VP of merchandise told Rovell, “you couldn’t make that number up.” It’s pretty incredible that they managed that precise number, but on Kobe night it was meant to be.
