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Prime tickets to the New York Knicks’ first playoff game in two years are going for more than $20,000 — with more than $5,000 tacked on in service fees by one popular resale site.
A courtside seat on Stubhub — with unobstructed views of Knicks stars Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle battling the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 at Madison Square Garden on Friday night — is listed at $14,986. Add on another $5,251 in “fees” charged by the site and the total comes to $20,237 for the first-round Eastern Conference matchup.
For anyone looking to sit just a few rows from the hardwood, tickets range from $1,800 to $12,547 — not including the fees.
Resale sites like StubHub and Vivid Seats add on the sliding fee depending on the price of the tickets to help “deliver the most secure ticket-buying experience,” according to StubHub’s site.
Thelowest priced tickets for the soldout game on Vivid Seats were starting at $341. But that price jumps to $448.37 after adding in $107.37 in fees.
That means a family of four would have to pay nearly $2,000 to cheer the Knicks from the nosebleed sections of The World’s Most Famous Arena — and that’s before buying hot dogs, pretzels and beer.
A spokesperson for Madison Square Garden Sports told The Post: “This exorbitant pricing is being driven exclusively by ticket scalpers who are motivated solely by making money off our fans.”
“All playoff tickets sold by MSG were sold at face value, with ticket prices starting at $168 for the Knicks with an average ticket price of $326,” the spokesperson said.
“MSG’s mission is, and always has been, to put tickets at their original price directly in the hands of our fans attending our events.”
The MSG Sports spokesperson directed fans to the Garden’s “Fans First” program, which seeks to offer playoff tickets in pre-sale while vetting purchasers so as to ensure the tickets don’t end up in the hands of resellers.
That didn’t stop some longtime Knicks fans from lamenting the high price of cheering on the team.
“How am I supposed to support my basketball team lmao,” said one Knicks fan, who goes by the Twitter handle @bannedyoangel.
The Knicks on Saturday took home-court advantage from the Cavs with a 101-97 victory over Donovan Mitchell’s crew at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland. They play Game 2 of the best-of-7 series in Cleveland on Tuesday.
Before the season began, StubHub, the largest online second-hand ticket marketplace, said the Knicks were the most in-demand ticket in the NBA, overtaking the Los Angeles Lakers, who held the top spot for the five previous seasons.
The Knicks and Lakers, the two teams who play in the two largest markets in the country, jointly accounted for nearly 40% of league-wide ticket sales, according to StubHub.
The second-place Lakers sold nearly 70% more tickets entering the season than the Toronto Raptors, who were a distant third, according to StubHub.
While things have looked up for the Knicks on the court, its owner has been hauled into a court of law as part of a civil action initiated by lawyers who say they were banned from entering MSG and its sister venues including Radio City Music Hall.
Earlier this month, The Post was the first to report that team owner James Dolan, who runs MSG, is on the verge of settling allegations that he duped investors and spied on employees as part of a scheme to pay the ballooning tab for construction of the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas.
Last month, Dolan paid $85 million as part of a settlement to resolve a lawsuit brought by MSG Entertainment investors who accused the Cablevision scion of inflating the purchase and diluting the value of their shares when the company merged with MSG Networks.
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