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Bernie Sanders’ $1,894 Knicks ticket vs. the NBA’s $43 median: what a seat really costs in 2026-27, team by team
Bernie Sanders' $1,894 Knicks figure is real but describes one record night. The league median get-in is $43, a family night ranges from $168 in New Orleans to $1,277 at MSG, and 76ers road games carry a 242% premium.
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Bernie Sanders picked the most expensive regular-season game in NBA history to make his point. On Wednesday night, a day after the Knicks raised their first championship banner in 53 years, the Vermont senator posted that 26 of the league’s 30 owners are billionaires. He added that “the average ticket price to see the Knicks play the Sixers last night cost $1,894.” His conclusion: “You should not have to be rich to take your kids to a ball game.”
The post passed half a million views by Thursday morning and drew nearly 2,000 replies. Many of them made the same objection: the Knicks-76ers opener was an outlier in every way. Both sides are partly right. The $1,894 figure is real, but it describes one night at one building. The rest of the league is far cheaper, and the gap between the top and the bottom has never been wider.
Where the $1,894 came from
The number is a TickPick average for the opener that was first reported by The Athletic, the highest average price ever recorded for an NBA regular-season game, with many seats listed above $5,000. The cheapest way in was lower but still historic. A TicketData check published by USA TODAY on Oct. 19 put the get-in price at $1,474, about three times the next priciest game on the schedule, the Knicks’ Christmas Day Finals rematch with the Spurs at $487. When the Knicks opened single-game sales in September, the get-in price for the opener had already passed $1,250.
The banner, the ring ceremony and LeBron James’ first game for Philadelphia all landed on the same night. That is the kind of combination resale markets price at a premium, and it says little about a normal Tuesday in November.
The typical NBA ticket is $43
Across all 1,194 regular-season and NBA Cup games in the TicketData set, the median get-in price is $43. The Knicks’ median for the whole season is $226, double the Lakers at $113, the only other team in triple digits. The Celtics follow at $93. At the bottom, the Grizzlies and Hornets have a median get-in price of $19.50, with the Pelicans at $21 and the Jazz at $21.50. A cheap seat at the Garden costs more than 11 times one in Memphis.
A separate snapshot built on SeatGeek prices with fees, compiled by RotoWire on Sept. 30, gives the same picture with a family attached. Four of the cheapest seats, parking, two beers, two sodas and four hot dogs average $343.18 across the league. The bill runs from $167.97 in New Orleans to $1,276.60 at a Knicks game. Tickets are about 74% of the total, and at 22 of the 30 teams, four cheapest seats cost less than one average cheapest seat at the Garden.
| Team | Average cheapest seat | Family of four, one home game | Full season streamed without cable* | Season of TV vs. one family night* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Knicks | $294.00 | $1,276.60 | $503.82 | 0.4x |
| Lakers | $115.44 | $566.77 | $523.82 | 0.9x |
| 76ers | $109.60 | $554.23 | $473.52 | 0.9x |
| Celtics | $98.19 | $493.49 | $413.52 | 0.8x |
| Timberwolves | $97.88 | $477.56 | $443.81 | 0.9x |
| Warriors | $77.96 | $442.60 | $413.52 | 0.9x |
| Bulls | $75.53 | $408.31 | $443.82 | 1.1x |
| Spurs | $67.36 | $401.95 | $443.81 | 1.1x |
| Raptors | $80.36 | $400.88 | Not estimated | – |
| Heat | $62.96 | $352.96 | $323.82 | 0.9x |
| Magic | $59.20 | $331.38 | $443.81 | 1.3x |
| Nets | $50.23 | $305.26 | $443.82 | 1.5x |
| Clippers | $47.88 | $304.79 | Not estimated | – |
| Mavericks | $52.42 | $295.37 | $423.82 | 1.4x |
| Pistons | $50.36 | $292.51 | $443.81 | 1.5x |
| Kings | $48.68 | $279.70 | $431.52 | 1.5x |
| Hawks | $51.65 | $269.83 | $269.88 plus Prime | – |
| Thunder | $48.52 | $256.28 | $432.82 | 1.7x |
| Bucks | $41.08 | $239.64 | $423.82 | 1.8x |
| Pacers | $41.56 | $238.20 | $443.81 | 1.9x |
| Trail Blazers | $36.56 | $237.45 | $443.82 | 1.9x |
| Suns | $38.96 | $234.45 | $433.82 | 1.9x |
| Rockets | $35.28 | $227.86 | $523.82 | 2.3x |
| Nuggets | $35.63 | $226.84 | $523.82 | 2.3x |
| Cavaliers | $37.05 | $224.13 | $443.81 | 2.0x |
| Wizards | $31.64 | $209.11 | $503.82 | 2.4x |
| Hornets | $31.08 | $206.37 | $443.81 | 2.2x |
| Jazz | $30.32 | $195.28 | $448.82 | 2.3x |
| Grizzlies | $25.48 | $177.48 | $443.81 | 2.5x |
| Pelicans | $22.17 | $167.97 | $428.82 | 2.6x |
The LeBron tax and the Saturday tax
Where a team plays matters, but so does who comes to town. Philadelphia is now the league’s biggest road draw by a wide margin. In the TicketData numbers, 76ers road games carry a median premium of 242% over the rest of the host team’s home schedule. They are the most expensive visiting ticket, or tied for it, in 25 of the 29 arenas they visit. The Warriors and Spurs (93%) and Knicks (91%) are next. The Nets go the other way: games against Brooklyn sell for 25% less than a typical home game, with the Kings at 24% less and the Hawks at 20%.
The calendar adds its own markup. In the SeatGeek data, the cheapest seat at a typical Friday-to-Sunday game costs about 32% more than at a midweek game, relative to each team’s own average. Saturday is the priciest day and Monday the cheapest. All five Christmas Day games price above their host team’s average. For a budget-minded family, the best deal in the league is a weeknight game against a non-contender in a small market. Three Pelicans home games in the sample had seats listed at $10.
What the senator’s argument leaves out, and what it gets right
Most of the prices in this debate are resale prices. Teams set face value and sell season tickets, then fans and brokers resell them, and a title team in the country’s biggest market will always clear at a premium. The Knicks did not charge $1,894 for every seat on Tuesday. The market did. Even so, teams watch that market closely and lean on dynamic pricing for their own single-game inventory, and the resale data is the clearest public signal of what a seat is worth.
Sanders’ broader point is harder to dismiss. He has pushed the same theme for more than a year, including a late-summer post noting that taxpayers helped fund many of the buildings. Team values keep climbing, and the league’s newest national media deals are worth about $76 billion over 11 years. Getting into a building has become cheap only where the team is bad or the market is small. In New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, a family’s night out costs more than $475 before souvenirs.
The couch is cheaper, but not free
The alternative is not cheap either. Earlier this week WhyNBA priced a full cord-cutting season for every market: the team’s local streaming option plus ESPN Unlimited, Peacock Premium and Prime Video. Set against one night at the arena, the numbers flip from market to market. A Knicks fan can stream every local and national game for about $504, or about 0.4 of one family trip to the Garden. A Pelicans fan pays about $429 for the season on screen, about the cost of two and a half family nights at the Smoothie King Center. Heat fans, whose local games stream free, pay only the national $323.82, less than one family night at the Kaseya Center.
That is the real divide Sanders’ post points to. In the league’s biggest markets, the cheapest way to follow the team is a stack of subscriptions, and the arena has become a special-occasion purchase. In its smallest markets, a family can still see a game for under $200. For the Knicks, the next test comes quickly. The Pistons visit the Garden on Tuesday, Oct. 27, on NBC, with no banner and no LeBron, a cleaner measure of what a regular night at the champions’ building now costs.
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