It may literally be the most coveted ticket in sports history: Game 4, 2026 NBA Finals, Madison Square Garden. Before the Finals started, tickets on the resale market for Games 3, 4, and 6, were already approaching Super Bowl valuations. For Game 6, which before the series was presumed to be the most likely home clincher for the New York Knicks it was $5000 just to get in the building. Then the Knicks won Game 1, and the “get in” price for Game 6 shot up 57% overnight, to $7900.
Then something really crazy (and thoroughly disorienting to longtime Knicks fans) happened: the Knicks won Game 2. Game 4 is now the hottest ticket because it’s now plausible that the Knicks will sweep the NBA Finals (again, that is a deeply weird thing to write). The get in for Game 4 is now above $10,000, more than three times the price before Game 1. And the most expensive listings for Game 4 are courtside seats listed at nearly $200,000.
Which got us thinking: What if all the Knicks ticket holders followed 76ers fans and sold their tickets? Like, all of them, as in, how much cash would be generated if every seat in the Garden was resold at the current average asking price? The answer: it exceeds the GDP of a handful of small island nations. Let us do the math…
The Inventory
The current iteration of Madison Square Garden opened in 1968, and underwent major renovations in 1991 and 2013. It’s the oldest arena in the NBA. Its capacity for NBA games is 19,812, and the section breakdown is as follows (caveat: MSG doesn’t publish its exact seating manifest so these are estimations):
Floor and courtside: ~282 seats
100 Level: ~3500 seats
Madison Club-Suite Level: ~ 400-500
200 Level: ~4000-4500 seats
300 Level: ~5000-5500 seats
400 Level: ~3500-4000 seats
Chase Bridges: ~100 seats
Asking Prices: Floor and Courtside
As expected, the floor and courtside seats are seeing the highest asking prices for Game 4, and the asks have gone from “yikes” to “that’s 3x the median U.S. household income for a single seat at a basketball game.” You can sit behind the scorers table in Section 5 D, Row A for $178,600. Maybe you prefer the other side of the court, a bounce pass away from Spike Lee. You can sit in section 11 D, Row A for $166,000. Or if you want easier bathroom access (we assume that’s why you’d pay more to move back), you can sit in Row 5 of the same section for $197,900.
The average asking price for Floor and Courtside seats is $72,000. With 282 seats available, that makes for a total potential outlay of $20.2M.
Asking Prices: 100 Level
The 100 Level comprises the lower bowl at MSG. You can grab a seat in Section 9, Row 12 for $24,208; Section 117, Row 6 can be had for $50,500. In all, the average ask for a 100 Level seat is $30,000. There’s approximately 3500 seats in the section, bringing the total for the level to $105M.
Asking Prices: 200 Level
Now we’re getting into a section where the tickets are only as expensive as a used car, not a down payment for the average home in the U.S. For $16,278 you can sit behind one of the baskets in Section 219 Row 4; mid-court in the same section can be had for $13,831 in Section 225, Row 15. You can split the difference and put down $14,032 for a corner seat in Section 214, Row 6.
There’s approximately 4200 seats in the 200 Level. At an average asking price of $16,000 that’s $67.2M to buy out the section.
Asking Prices: 300/400 Level
For $14,890 you can sit in the first row of Section 311; for $17,510 you can sit in Section 315, Row 2. In all, there are approximately 5380 seats in the 300 Level at an average ask of $13,500 that’s good for a $72.6M total for the section. There are approximately 4000 seats in the 400 Level. At an average ask of $12,500 that’s $50M for the section.
The Get In Price
At this writing (Sunday afternoon), the lowest section average listed on Seat Geek is $10,628 for seats in the upper corners. Before the series started that number was $3609 (remember that’s when the conventional wisdom was that Game 6 would be the best chance to witness a Knicks clincher.
So What’s the Total?
Here’s the tally:
Floor and Courtside: $20.3M
100 Level: $105M
200 Level: $67.2M
300 Level: $72.6M
400 Level: $50M
Madison Club Suites: $9M (450 seats at an average of $20,000)
Chase Bridges: $1.01M (100 seats at an average of $11,000)
Total if every ticket resold at average resale prices for each section: $325.2M
What Could That Buy?
The Knicks themselves for starters. According to spotrac.com, the Knicks combined salaries for the current team is $209,823,691. In fact, every NBA team has a payroll under $234M.
The current funding for the National Endowment for the Arts is just $207M. Who needs ballet when you have Mitchell Robinson shooting free throws?
The most expensive apartment ever sold in New York was a $238M Central Park tower penthouse. You could buy about 1300 houses in Brooklyn at the median price in the borough.
Will This Be the Most Coveted Sports Ticket Ever?
The current record ticket resale price for an NBA game is $167,146 for a seat in Game 7 of the Finals in 2010 between the Celtics and Lakers. There was a confirmed sale of $204,746 for a ticket to the Manny Pacquiao - Floyd Mayweather fight in 2015.
Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas between the 49ers and Chiefs in 2024 saw an average ticket price of $12,128, the most expensive average ticket price for an NFL game. The current weighted average for tickets to Game 4 Wednesday is $18,100.
In 2016 there was a confirmed sale of a single ticket to Game 7 of the World Series between the Cubs and Indians for $1.17M (that was the Cubs’ first championship in 108 years; Cleveland hadn’t won since 1954). It would seem that Game 4 wouldn’t surpass that, but if the Knicks win Game 3…?
