Cheapest Ticket to Knicks Opener at MSG Climbs to More Than $2,000

The Knicks are about to raise their first championship banner in 53 years, and getting in the building will cost a small fortune. 

The defending champions open the regular season against the new-look 76ers at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night. As of Monday afternoon, tickets on secondary marketplaces were going for as low as $1,100, which “slightly surprised” TicketData founder Keith Pagello, who points out that the cheapest tickets for Game 3 of the NBA Finals just ahead of tip-off were about $6,700.

By Monday evening, prices for Tuesday night’s game featuring reigning Finals MVP Jalen Brunson and the NBA’s all-time scoring leader LeBron James had climbed, with the cheapest individual resale ticket on Ticketmaster listed for more than $1,700. On Tuesday morning, the cheapest individual ticket on Ticketmaster was more than $2,200; on StubHub, it was more than $2,100, and on SeatGeek it exceeded $2,200.

“Definitely surging,” Pagello tells Front Office Sports, noting that all the ingredients for an “extraordinarily expensive regular season game” exist, including the debut of James and former Celtics star Jaylen Brown as 76ers.

For the vast majority of Knicks fans who didn’t get to see their team win the championship in San Antonio, “this is arguably the next closest thing to being part of that championship moment, watching the banner being raised to the rafters at MSG, where it will hang forever,” Pagello says.

“This will go down as one of the most expensive regular-season games in NBA history, if not the most expensive,” he says.

The closest historical comparisons he can think of include the first Lakers game following the death of Kobe Bryant in 2020, Bryant’s final game before retirement in 2016—in which he scored 60 points—and games in 2023 when James was approaching the all-time scoring record.

One interesting trend emerged over the last week: Before the Monday evening surge, the get-in price had dropped by as much as 15%, while prices for center-court sections in the lower bowl simultaneously jumped by more than 25%.

“Generally speaking, the gap between premium seats and the cheapest tickets narrows as an event approaches, with the best seats commanding less of a premium,” Pagello says. “But it’s not entirely surprising to see this game buck that trend, given the number of deep-pocketed New Yorkers willing to pay a premium to be close to the court for such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Sports Illustrated Tickets CEO David Lane agrees that Tuesday night will likely end up among the “most expensive home openers” in NBA history. According to Lane, the average home opener sees tickets selling for between $400 and $500 apiece. 

“For Knicks fans, it’s been a generation since they’ve been able to see a moment like this,” he told FOS’s Baker Machado on Front Office Sports Tonight. “So you can understand why prices are elevated.”

Still, Lane said hope is not lost for Knicks fans who live close enough to MSG to buy tickets closer to tip-off. As of Monday morning, there were resale tickets listed on Ticketmaster for as high as $28,000, on StubHub for more than $25,000, and on SeatGeek for over $24,000.

“You see that type of tactic all the time,” Lane said. “Those tickets will move down into a sellable range.”

Pagello cautions that fans shouldn’t bank on scoring last-minute tickets at reasonable prices, including because “inventory is exceptionally thin.” He also notes that the ring ceremony, which begins at 6:30 p.m., means the crowd will want to be in their seats “well before the game starts.” 

The get-in price of more than $2,000 is still lower than what tickets sold for when the Knicks originally put them on the market last month. At first, individual Knicks tickets for the season opener went on sale for an average of $2,500, but Madison Square Garden Sports quickly paused ticket sales and issued a statement saying there was a “mistake in our pricing.”