If you were holding out hope of catching the New York Knicks play in the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, it’s going to cost you.
With the Knicks in the Finals for the first time since 1999, tickets were already in historic demand. Now that they’ve taken the first two games of the series, ticket prices at home are entering the stratosphere.
The get-in price for Game 3 on Monday — meaning the minimum price to get in the door following Friday’s win — is $10,085, according to TickPick, a no-fee ticket marketplace.
Game 4 on Wednesday isn't any better, at $11,814. Compare that to the $600 get-in price for Game 2 last night in San Antonio, that’s nearly 20 times higher.
Of course, those are current asking prices. Surely the average ticket price, which accounts for earlier and cheaper sales, tells a more reasonable story?
Not exactly. The average ticket price for Games 3 and 4 at MSG are $6,487 and $7,163 respectively, according to data from TickPick. That’s the most expensive average price ever recorded for an NBA final. The next closest would be Game 5 of the 2024 Celtics-Mavericks series at $2,072, less than a third the price. Every other game in the all-time top 10 came in under $1,800.
In fact, MSG prices are approaching Super Bowl territory, which TickPick’s Matt Ferrel called “extremely unusual” for a basketball game. According to StubHub, Monday's Game 3 is actually outpacing demand for each of the last two Super Bowls — running about 4% higher than Super Bowl LX in February and roughly 11% higher than the Eagles-Chiefs game the year before.
And keep in mind, unlike the Super Bowl, this is a series. If it goes seven games, three of them will be in New York, each potentially commanding Super Bowl-level minimums.
A fair number of Knicks fans capitalized on the price differential between New York and San Antonio and flew south. Ferrel said 33% of buyers for Game 2 in San Antonio came from New York and New Jersey zip codes.
“It quite literally is more affordable to have flown to San Antonio, gone to Game 1 and 2, got a hotel, enjoyed San Antonio, did some touring and fly back, than it is to step foot in Madison Square Garden, where you may live,” he said.
Why the gulf between the two cities? Ferrel said he can't make rational sense of the raw numbers, but he can explain the gap. The Spurs have won more recently and they represent a smaller market, to start, “whereas New York just has everything stacked for it.”
The Knicks haven't been on this stage in 27 years, he noted. Prices will keep moving as the series goes on, Ferrel said.
“There's such pent-up demand in New York for the Knicks,” Ferrel said. “I mean, as a New York resident the Knicks really do represent the city in a way that no other sporting franchise in the city does.”
