See a Knicks opener for under $1,000? Oh, those were the pre-title days.
By TANIA GANGULI
This summer, Ankit Kakkad, a New York Knicks season-ticket holder, thought it was a great idea to sell his ticket to Game 4 of the NBA Finals for about $28,000. The money would cover his Knicks season tickets for about the next two and a half seasons.
He felt even better about the decision when the team went down by 29 points. But as the Knicks clawed back in the second half, regret crept in. It escalated as the team pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in league history, with a last-second tip-in by OG Anunoby.
“If I’m being rational, absolutely it was the right move to make,” he said recently.
But Kakkad, 42, is not rational. He is a Knicks fan. He had believed every year of his life that the Knicks would win a championship. He believes last year’s Knicks team was perhaps the greatest team in NBA history.
This kind of enthusiasm is part of what drives the sports ticket market.
Knicks tickets have never been cheap, but their championship last season means that now a single ticket can cost more than a vacation in Paris, or a month’s rent in a midsize American city. The team’s home, Madison Square Garden, is the most expensive place to watch a game in the NBA. Prices for tickets this season, which started Tuesday, are averaging nearly twice what they did last season on the secondary market, including on sites like StubHub and SeatGeek.
The average price for the Knicks season opener Tuesday was $1,894, according to ticket reselling site TickPick, the highest average price ever for a regular-season NBA game. Many tickets were going for more than $5,000.
“My impression is that people are resigned to the fact that it’s New York City and it’s the Knicks, and the Knicks are winning and the ticket prices are just going to be high,” said Jonathan Macri, who hosts a podcast called “Knicks Film School.” He said he had never seen as much demand for Knicks tickets as during the past few years, during the team’s ascent.
The Knicks’ season opener wasn’t a typical regular-season game. The players received their championship rings and hung a banner for the team’s first championship in 53 years. They played the Philadelphia 76ers, who signed LeBron James this summer. That’s partly why, as of Monday morning, the cheapest ticket available for the game was $1,000 — $786 more than the cheapest ticket for last year’s Knicks season opener. (The star-studded 76ers won Tuesday night, 106-100.)
And while the Knicks don’t control the secondary market, the prices they do control are rising, too. The Knicks have a policy not to raise ticket prices after missing the playoffs, but they have made the playoffs the past four seasons.
A few weeks ago, when the Knicks released single-game tickets for their season opener, the cheapest was more than $1,000. The Knicks responded to fans’ outrage by saying those prices were a mistake. The team gave refunds of hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars to those who had paid the initial high prices. In a statement, the Knicks said ticket prices would revert to last season’s prices plus an increase of 12%.
Season-ticket prices have been increasing about that much, too.
Dashiell Desloovere, a longtime fan, has the least expensive quarter-season plan, in the arena’s 200 level. For 11 games, his seat went from $1,276 last season to $1,430 this season.
“My wife says the Knicks were my first love,” said Desloovere, who couldn’t afford Knicks tickets when he was growing up on the Upper East Side. “So she’s OK with me being crazy when I watch them.”
The Action Network, a sports media company that focuses on sports betting, conducted a study that found Madison Square Garden to be the priciest NBA arena this season. The study analyzed more than 300,000 tickets from each of the league’s 30 teams and estimated that a family of four could pay $1,930.55 to buy four tickets, two beers, two soft drinks, four hot dogs and one parking space to see the Knicks. The NBA average was $954.64.
Overall, the study found that prices across the league had risen an average of 12.8%. Knicks ticket prices increased 27.2%, the seventh-highest increase in the league.
“It’s amazing how they don’t consider the average man,” said John Gravagna, who grew up in Flushing, Queens, and had season tickets from 1998 until about 10 years ago when he found it difficult to sell or even give away his tickets. Sports, he argued, are different from other forms of entertainment because “it creeps into the fabric of your family.”
The timing of this kind of pricing bump isn’t a new phenomenon.
In 2005, Holy Cross economics professors Victor Matheson and Robert Baade wrote that from 1983 and 2000, the average National Football League team had raised ticket prices 6% each year, but Super Bowl-winning teams increased them 12%. That section of the paper is titled, “Championships, the gift that keeps on taking.”
What’s new, Matheson said, is that the demand for premium experiences has risen sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“High diesel prices and high beef prices aren’t affecting the folks who own a $5.5 million town house in Manhattan,” he said. “Those folks have been doing quite well.” He added: “Those are the folks that are buying the finals tickets. Not the schoolteacher, not the police officer, not the restaurant worker.”
For Kakkad, the regret of selling the ticket to Game 4 wore off quickly. He still watched at a bar with his friends, and celebrated with Knicks fans.
The entire playoff run took on a special meaning for him. His mother died in April, early in the Knicks’ championship run, and he turned to the team to distract him from his pain. They won and won and won.
“That was my mom looking out for me, right? Making sure she gave me something to look forward to,” he said recently. “This run probably saved me in a lot of ways.”
This year, Kakkad’s season tickets went from about $10,000 per seat for the season to a little more than $11,000. He works in information technology and said Knicks season tickets were a splurge he allowed himself, noting he doesn’t have many expenses and doesn’t have children. But the situation with ticket prices does unsettle him.
“Fans are of all backgrounds,” he said. “New York Knicks fans, true fans, are absolutely priced out. I mean think about any of the playoff games, like what average fan can afford that? I’m never dropping 20 grand on a ticket.”
