By Adam Minter | Updated on Jun 10, 2026 at 08:55 PM
Nobody expected the New York Knicks’ first Finals home games in a generation to be cheap. But this championship run has pushed the limits of even New York excess. Before Monday’s game, a law firm and a private equity giant split a $1 million bid for a pair of courtside seats in a charity auction. Before Wednesday’s matchup, the “cheap” seats on resale sites hovered around $5,000 .
While everyone gawks at those prices, another number deserves attention. Madison Square Garden, the arena which is owned by the Knicks’ parent company, enjoys a tax break that has cost city taxpayers around $1 billion since 1984 .
Put differently, Knicks fans are helping to pay for seats that most of them will never have a chance to sit in.
That tension is at the heart of a two-track fan economy now defining much of professional sports. One track plays out inside the arena, where premium ticket holders enjoy increasingly exclusive experiences. The other is found at watch parties, bars and living rooms. One group of fans can afford the live experience; the other can’t, despite often being asked to subsidize it.
During their astonishing playoff run, the Knicks have done something that few institutions can pull off: They’ve earned the undivided attention of New York. Knicks flags and signs hang from apartment windows. Jerseys and hats have migrated into workplaces. And strangers on the subway are striking up conversations about officiating and lineups.
Shared experiences like these are rare in an era fragmented by screens, algorithms and feeds. That’s a key reason television networks and streaming services pay billions for the rights. And it’s why — even as they’re priced out of the Garden — fans flock to sprawling watch parties across the city.
The Garden is inaccessible to them, in part, because of supply and demand. There are only so many seats. But increasingly, the divided fan experience is engineered by teams and venues. In recent decades, many stadiums, including MSG , have added premium seating and other luxury spaces at the expense of seating for regular fans.
You can see the consequences during broadcasts and streams. At the Finals, celebrities dominate the camera shots inside the Garden. But when television producers look for the loudest, most recognizably New York expressions of hoops joy, they pan to the watch parties beyond MSG.
The average Knicks fan probably accepted long ago that they’ll never sit courtside, but salt is rubbed into the wound when public funds are effectively underwriting a tiered fan economy. The Garden’s tax break is just one example. And New York is far from the only government subsidizing for-profit sports even as the price of a ticket rises out of reach, and well past the rate of inflation .
Yet when politicians tout tax breaks for teams, they rarely talk about who can actually get into the building. Instead, they tend to focus on economic development, hotel occupancy and tourism. But let’s face it: people aren’t hanging Knicks flags in windows because they’re excited about Midtown’s restaurant revenues. They do it because they want to be a part of something. Like parks, museums or beaches, sports help create a sense of community.
If that’s the purpose of sports, it’s worth spotlighting how a lot of fans are getting a diminished experience — or no experience at all.
It does not have to be this way. In recent months, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has shown how small gestures can push back against two-track fandom. After criticizing FIFA’s exorbitant pricing for the 2026 World Cup, he negotiated 1,000 tickets for local residents to seven matches, to be distributed by lottery. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of tickets that will be sold for matches in the New York area. But it’s a clear acknowledgment that fans deserve access.
The Knicks, if they aspire to be the community asset they claim to be, could do something similar. To be fair, they’re already donating 250 tickets per Finals game to underprivileged youth, and that’s admirable. And the Garden’s Fans First program is designed to help fans avoid inflated resale prices. Those are worthwhile efforts, but they are limited in scope and don’t address the broader accessibility question.
Reserving a small section of the Garden for New Yorkers at accessible prices — from the regular season through the Finals — would send an even stronger message.
Imagine that. In the midst of the title-clinching Finals game, the camera could pan away from its latest Timothée Chalamet shot to 500 locals going absolutely nuts for their team. It’d be a New York sensation.
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