Hoops fans are shelling out big bucks for today’s Nets-Knicks face-off at the Garden.
The lowest asking price on the secondary market — a so-called cheap seat for this afternoon’s holiday battle — is $179, market researchers at TiqIQ said last night.
The average asking price for a ticket to the 3:30 p.m. tip-off? An above-the-rim $692.91 — the second-highest for a single game this NBA season, trailing only the $870.49 for the Spurs-Knicks on Jan. 3.
The Nets’ first foray to Madison Square Garden this season, on Dec. 19, was also a big seller (average asking price: $631.49).
Part of the reason is demand.
With much of the city’s workforce off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Knick season-ticket holders are holding on to their ducats. That, combined with high interest in a game between the suddenly red-hot Nets and the Atlantic Division-leading Knicks, has sent prices through the roof.
“What is driving these prices is the fact that there is low quantity and the game is being played on a holiday, in the afternoon, between intercity rivals,” said Chris Matcovich, senior director of data and communications at TiqIQ.
New Jersey photographer Gerald Fox, 30, said if his family wasn’t in town visiting, he would have coughed up the big bucks.
“I thought about going and looked at tickets online,” he said. “It should be a good game, with the rivalry between the two.”