Fans start camping out for tickets to LeBron James’ Manila tour

MANILA, Philippines – The line for free tickets at the Nike Park of the Bonifacio Global City for the once-in-a-lifetime LeBron James event on July 23 is getting longer by the minute.

A big crowd has started to camp out at the Nike branch as early as Monday night for the ticket release scheduled at 12 noon Wednesday for the Miami Heat superstar’s much anticipated first visit of to the country.

Nike Philippines will be giving two tickets per head free of charge on a first come, first served basis but they are now being sold online for as much as Php 1,500 each. These can go even higher leading to the event on July 23, which will coincide with the unveiling of the Nike uniforms of the FIBA Asia-bound Gilas Pilipinas national men's basketball team.

"A third-party group is handling the security and crowd control and they will stay overnight until the scheduled 12 noon release tomorrow," a Nike BHS store representative told Philstar.com in a telephone interview.

"Fans don't need to buy from our store to get the tickets. They're free of charge," the same store representative said in Filipino. "It's already beyond us what will they do to the tickets."

Nike High Street was not in privy to the exact number of tickets to be given away tomorrow since Nike Philippines will be the one releasing them.

"Our store is only the venue for the ticket releasing but we're not the organizers, it's Nike Philippines," the representative added.

James’ Manila tour will be held as part of Nike’s "Leave a Message" campaign designed to inspire young Filipino athletes to strive for greatness and perhaps be like James, happen, is expecting it to grow by the thousands today. – with report from Joey Villar