‘How am I supposed to support my team?’
A New York Knicks fans lamented the astronomical price to score a seat to the team’s first home playoff game in two years — with some tickets costing more than $20,000, according to a second-hand ticket-selling site.
A courtside seat — with unobstructed views of Knicks stars Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle battling the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 at Madison Square Garden on Friday night — is going for $14,986 on StubHub. Add another $5,251 in “fees” and the total comes to $20,238 for the first-round Eastern Conference matchup.
For anyone looking to sit just a few rows from the hardwood, tickets range from $1,800 to $12,547.
“How am I supposed to support my basketball team lmao,” said one Knicks fan, who goes by the Twitter handle @bannedyoangel, after posing a screenshot from the Gametime website showing a seating map of MSG over the weekend.
The lowest ticket price were starting at $370.
That means a family of four would have to pay in excess of $1,500 to cheer the Knicks from the nosebleed sections of The World’s Most Famous Arena — and that’s before buying hot dogs, pretzels and beer.
The Post has sought comment from the Knicks as well as its parent company Madison Square Garden Sports.
The Knicks on Saturday took home-court advantage from the Cavs with their impressive 101-97 victory over Donovan Mitchell’s crew at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland. They play Game 2 of the best-of-7 series in Cleveland on Tuesday.
Before the season began, StubHub, the largest online second-hand ticket marketplace, said the Knicks were the most in-demand ticket in the NBA, overtaking the Los Angeles Lakers, who held the top spot for the five previous seasons.
The Knicks and Lakers, the two teams who play in the two largest markets in the country, jointly accounted for nearly 40% of league-wide ticket sales, according to StubHub.
The second-place Lakers sold nearly 70% more tickets entering the season than the Toronto Raptors, who were a distant third, according to StubHub.
While things have looked up for the Knicks on the court, its owner has been hauled into a court of law as part of a civil action initiated by lawyers who say they were banned from entering MSG and its sister venues including Radio City Music Hall.
Earlier this month, The Post was the first to report that team owner James Dolan, who runs MSG, is on the verge of settling allegations that he duped investors and spied on employees as part of a scheme to pay the ballooning tab for construction of the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas.
Last month, Dolan paid $85 million as part of a settlement to resolve a lawsuit brought by MSG Entertainment investors who accused the Cablevision scion of inflating the purchase and diluting the value of their shares when the company merged with MSG Networks.