A few thoughts on buying after-market tickets. At this moment, a lot of ticket-sellers are charging inflated prices as expected. I'm not taking about opening night, which is pretty crazy, just regular season games. Sources like stubhub, ebay, etc. seem to running at 3-4 times face value. Flash seats is mixed. Some people are selling at a reasonable price (maybe 30-50% above face value), but there is a flash-seats charge that gets added which makes them more expensive (adds another 15% or something). I saw some reasonable prices (not cheap, not face value, but reasonable) deals on flash seats, and a lot of those tickets are getting purchased or have been purchased. I also saw a lot of expensive flash seats that are not getting purchased yet, but I assume demand will go up among the larger fan base. I have no idea if the deals will get better or worse over time, but I'm guessing they'll get worse once the lottery proves ineffective.
Given all that, and given that I wanted a pair of very good seats for a special occasion, I went ahead and bought club-level seats (C109) for a game I really wanted to see. I figured i would never get them through the lottery. I'm guessing I paid around 35% above face value plus a flash seats fee, which probably brought it up to around 50%. Not fantastic, but that game fit my schedule. The seats were also a WAY better value than virtually everything else available that night on any site. It wasn't that different from buying after-market tickets to a desirable game last year. One pair a few rows away was selling for $75 more per ticket. Another even higher in the arena was selling for $125 more.When you poke around on flash seats for different games, there are some ticket prices that are just completely out of whack.
I'm going to be in CLE to see the Browns on 11/16 and am hoping to go to the Q to see the Hawks game the night before. Is Flash Seats my best bet? How terrible are 200 level seats?
I think Flash Seats is your best bet, unless an RCF poster makes some offer in the Classified section. The 200 level at the Q is WAY better than Staples, because the Q does not have those mega levels of skyboxes that Staples has. So if you can get a center seat in a low 200-level row, it's not a bad seat. But those seats are getting sold for pretty high prices. With the way people are selling their tickets, you might be able to luck out with something affordable in the 100-level.
Buying overpriced Cavs tickets is comparable to buying regular priced Lakers tickets (even when their team sucks). I think you'll find Flash Seats affordable compared to what the LA Ticket agencies do.
For a 3d-interactive viewer of the Q, this is super-handy:
http://www.seats3d.com/nba/cleveland_cavaliers/