$10 tickets for Knicks' NBA Finals Game 1 watch party at Garden sell out in minutes

Although the Knicks will begin the NBA Finals in San Antonio on Wednesday night, the team is hosting a watch party inside Madison Square Garden.

Tickets went on sale through the official Madison Square Garden website Tuesday morning and sold out in a matter of minutes.

Tickets were $10, with net proceeds going to the Garden of Dreams Foundation. They were sold by exact seat and section like a typical Knicks game, though traditional courtside seating is not set up at the Garden for watch parties.

This was my queue spot for the Knicks WATCH PARTY…. Not a game but a watch party… #AlwaysKnicks pic.twitter.com/T4oDyAMeIa

— rs (@nhlrs55) June 2, 2026

Some fans shared screenshots on social media detailing the wait of more than 100,000 people hoping to buy tickets. That was the case for Syosset’s David Perlmutter.

Perlmutter said he received a tip that watch party tickets would go on sale at 11 a.m. the day before the first road game. He went online at 10:50 a.m. and kept refreshing to see if something would come up. By 10:58, the event loaded and he entered a virtual waiting room. When he entered the online queue at 11 a.m., nearly 105,000 people were ahead of him.

He also received an email from the Knicks at 11:02 a.m. that said the watch party tickets were on sale.

“Anyone that found out for the first time through the email had no shot,” he said. “Because I knew in advance of the email, and I effectively had no shot.”

Luckily, Perlmutter had a friend who got through the queue and secured two $10 tickets for him. He had been to watch parties in previous postseasons and said: “I absolutely loved it, which is why I was so excited to do this.”

A secondary market for the watch party started taking shape Tuesday afternoon, with hundreds of tickets listed on TickPick. The cheapest (row 15 of Section 208) was $38 as of 3 p.m. Tuesday, but several seats around the arena were being listed for more than $200.

Game 1 is set to start at 8:30 p.m., and doors at the Garden open at 7:30 p.m.

Official watch party plans for Knicks games usually do not get revealed until the day before each game. Game 2 is Friday night in San Antonio.

In addition to the Madison Square Garden watch party, the Knicks also are hosting a free outdoor watch party at SummerStage, an outdoor venue in Central Park. A registration form was required to attend. The Knicks website said the event is “at capacity” but guests “will be welcomed at a first come, first served basis and walk-ins are welcomed.”

Watch parties outside the Garden had been the craze earlier in the playoffs, but the NYPD banned them in the middle of the Eastern Conference Finals because of unruly fan behavior. A police spokesperson told Newsday last month that an estimated 6,000 people attended the May 21 watch party for Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals and six arrests were made that night.