NBA Finals ticket prices skyrocket and Knicks fans face dilemma: Sell or keep?

The plan was to get out and then get back in. They had four tickets and were going to find a way to get seven, probably by selling theirs and buying new ones. That’s how Daniel Kim and his band of six friends strategized to watch the NBA Finals together at Madison Square Garden. All New York Knicks diehards, they had lived through the dark days, the eras of prodigal sons and failed saviors, and came through to laugh about it now.

Kim, 39, has rooted for the team since he was a kid growing up in Somerset, New Jersey, inheriting the fandom from his father. Three years ago, he and his six friends bought four half-season tickets together in section 115. They rotated between games, each time passing the tickets down to a different quartet. They attended every regular-season game they had tickets for this year and then every playoff game.

But they had a plan for the finals. As season-ticket holders, they got seats for Games 3 and 6. They wanted to go together, all seven of them, friends for almost two decades now, the Knicks their adhesive. Finally, they could start listing all the point guards they had seen the team start in that time and laugh about it, as they did this weekend after the Knicks took a 2-0 series lead against the San Antonio Spurs.

Kim listed the tickets on Stubhub. He put them at a price he thought would be too high to reach — $12,000 each. The number, he admits, was “astronomical.”

“I didn’t even think they would sell,” he said.

Just after the end of Game 2, right after Victor Wembanyama fell to the ground after his game-winning shot went long, the tickets sold. Kim and his friends started to panic.

The value of every Knicks ticket at Madison Square Garden jumped. Seats in the 200s were now being listed at the same price Kim sold his for.

They started to scramble. They looked for seven together, somewhere. Those didn’t exist.

Monday morning, they found something, but it wasn’t perfect: Four seats in section 210, for about $7,200 each. Only four of them could attend. They didn’t even end up making a profit. They had split the sale among the seven of them. The math was not in their favor. It didn’t matter. The friends sent Kim the money to make up the difference in cost between what they made on their sale and their new tickets. It was $1,973.

“We had to find a way to go tonight,” Kim said. “Obviously, we were really bummed about all of this after Game 2 happened and the next day. This is an all-time fumble. What are we going to do? We were really mortified about the situation. And then last night, we, you know, we saw prices start to come down. It’s like, OK, we’ll find a way to go. It might hurt a little bit, but you know, this is maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us.”

The Knicks’ exuberant run to the finals has been a joy for their fans. Many have waited decades to get back to this point. Some weren’t even born the last time the team made the finals in 1999. A lucky few have waited more than a half-century to see the franchise win another title.

They have all celebrated together, with every clutch Jalen Brunson jumper, dominant Karl-Anthony Towns performance and double-digit playoff victory. With 13 straight wins, these Knicks have put together a playoff run for the ages.

It has also created some difficult questions for its fans. Prices for finals games at MSG have skyrocketed. The get-in price on the secondary market sat at roughly $8,000 late last week.

“I kind of wish the ticket prices weren’t as crazy as they are,” Knicks forward Josh Hart said Sunday. “I feel like a lot of people who have been waiting for this moment for a very long time, unfortunately, aren’t able to get into the building, when the cheapest ticket is 7 or 8,000 dollars. So that’s ridiculous. But it’s just going to be rocking.”

For those holding tickets and for those trying to get them, the dilemma has been the same: Is it worth it to go?

Eric Nehs has seats in section 218 and he thought about selling. As a partial season-ticket holder, he and a friend each paid $2,500 for their Game 4 spots. He saw the prices rising and admits the allure was strong. He hasn’t wanted to, but he has heard from others that he should. That he’s crazy for not selling.

He’s not alone. For so many, the value of going to Madison Square Garden, of actually seeing the Knicks in the finals, of being there and breathing it in and hearing the organ play, and feeling the building shake is incalculable. For them, the money they would make is not worth it.

There are fans who share tickets with their parents, their children, their friends, and who want to experience it together.

Nehs considers what he’d be giving up. He’s 38 and he has already outlived his father, he said, who died when Eric was just 1.

“I think about all the Knicks fans in 1999 after they lost, thinking ‘We’ll get back,’” he said. “How many of them passed away without even seeing something close? It might be crazy and it might be me who is known to be a catastrophizer. But that’s what I think about.”

Still, some have been so overwhelmed by the prices that they couldn’t resist. They set their price high and never thought anyone would be crazy enough to reach it.

Nicki Zenker said her father, Sandy, put his pair of tickets up for sale at $14,000 each. He’s been a season-ticket holder for more than 35 years. They’ll be going to Game 3 together, but their seats for Game 4 are, inexplicably, gone. Nicki prodded him to take the tickets down before someone bought them but just as he pondered it following Game 2, it was too late. Someone had bought the seats. But Sandy Zenker found a silver lining: now he’ll be able to watch the game together with his whole family instead of just one.

The Zenkers will still get to attend at least one more finals game at MSG. Other season-ticket holders used the high demand for seats to shop around. They sold seats to one game and kept theirs for another, netting a profit. Others bought and sold, hoping they could arbitrage the series.

Some, like Jesse Abraham, bought their seats early and got in relatively cheap. Others white-knuckled through their days as they waited on the seats to actually come through on Stubhub — fears of cancellation, which sometimes occur, are common.

Abraham got his on May 25 and only paid $3,800 for his Game 3 ticket. A lifelong Knicks fan, he was raised on the Knicks by his father. Abraham didn’t get to share the 1994 finals with him; his dad died three years earlier. The 1999 finals against the Spurs were never close.

“I’ve believed wholeheartedly we were championship material since last season, and knew that if we made it to the finals, I would be there to see it no matter what,” he said. “The Knicks are in so many ways the embodiment of my experience as a New Yorker and as a person, and being a part of this experience, at the Garden, is grounding and nearly spiritual. It’s very pricey, but also feels like a great deal, because it means a great deal.”

Craig Pollack knows that attending your favorite team’s championship games requires sacrifice. He said he paid about $4,000 each on May 23 for two tickets in section 210 so he could go with his father. They have been longtime fans but gave up their season tickets years ago.

Pollack’s family, even his dad for a moment, said he should sell. That there was too much to lose by keeping them.

He held tight. For him, being there matters, no matter the cost.

Pollack has paid dearly before. In 2024, he traded away what he said was an original banner for the 1970 title, the first one the Knicks ever won, to attend the World Series and see his beloved Yankees.

The banner’s origins are sketchy, but he found it among his grandmother’s possessions about 15 years ago; he said family members had once worked at MSG. He held onto it for years before he eventually tried to sell it but couldn’t find the right buyer. When the Yankees made their run to face the Los Angeles Dodgers, Pollack finally traded it in for seats to each of the three home games in New York.

The Yankees lost all three games and the series, but Pollack remains just as dedicated. He did not want to miss out on a Knicks finals game.

“Luckily not in a position where you know we financially need to go and make the 10 ‘Gs, and it’s going to make such a difference,” he said. “It’s more about being in the building. When you’re watching TV, like game one of the last round, you’re like, you have to be there, and the fact that you’re not there… you’ll do whatever you (can to) get there.”