The Athletic has live coverage of Spurs vs. Knicks in Game 5 of the 2026 NBA Finals.Â
SAN ANTONIO — Carlos Christmas, 50, didn't bother checking the Spurs app where he manages his season tickets. He owns a pair near the visitors' tunnel, costs him roughly $10,000 annually. The app, run by Ticketmaster, lets him know the resale value for seats in his area.
For the early rounds, the market wasn't noteworthy. He said it didn't get interesting until the Western Conference finals, when the do-or-die Game 6 against Oklahoma City projected upwards of $6,000 on resale.
But for the NBA Finals? He just presumed the occasion meant everyone blessed enough to have a ticket would be in the building. It was time to show out for their Spurs. So Games 1 and 2 proved to be a rude awakening.
“It was almost a road game for us,†Christmas said. “That pissed me off. It made me angry.â€
So, out of sheer curiosity, Christmas checked the app to see the market for his tickets for Saturday's Game 5 at Frost Bank Arena. He couldn't believe what he saw. The market for his tickets eclipsed $30,000. Per ticket.
He said the price for his pair has since dropped to $20,000 as of Friday night. Which means he could cash in his seats for $40,000. He's already experienced many of the 32 home wins, and the 11 home playoff games. And he could still, right now, make four times what he spent on the tickets.
Still, he can't pull the trigger. He just can't.
“Hell no!†he said. “To me, it's just so disrespectful to my players. I'm a diehard. My family's had tickets since right around the 1999 championship. I'm tied in. And it's the NBA Finals. How do you do that to your team in the finals?â€
The orange-and-blue breach in San Antonio expects to be even greater for Game 5 with the potential of a Knicks championship. Ticket sites are reporting that more than half of sales are going to credit cards with New York and New Jersey zip codes.
These invasions get romanticized as elite fandom, as the epitome of love for the game. It certainly looks next level when a crowd is packed with opposing colors. It's a massive flex to drown out a home crowd.
The San Francisco 49ers fan base regularly does this to NFL foes. Golden State Warriors fans travel heavy in the NBA. Los Angeles Dodgers jerseys fill MLB crowds across the nation. The Toronto Maple Leafs turn out enemy rinks.
Those faithful deserve a hat tip, including these Knicks who've taken it to another level. They're absolutely owning this moment they've waited for most or all of their lives. Even for those who aren't especially well off, this is their one thing worth the splurge.
“I appreciate it more than I think I'll ever be able to say,†Jalen Brunson said Friday of the road fan support. “Just very grateful and thankful. It's a really cool experience. Like I said, it's something that you can't really talk about. You just have to experience it.â€
This indeed highlights the unifying spirit of sports, the power of community and, just maybe, this country's potential to coexist on the other side of these most divisive times.
But this takeover phenomenon underscores one of the pronounced dividing lines in America: economics. The finances of sports have gotten to a place where presence is as much about purchasing power as it is about passion. It's a distorted reality produced by an industry governed by billionaires.
Knicks fans' advantage exists in size and wealth. It's a numbers game. By sheer virtue of having nearly nine million people in New York City, and the largest collection of millionaires in America, they simply have a higher percentage of fans who can stomach the cost.
The Knicks get so much money that the franchise doesn't even charge the multimillionaire celebrities who sit courtside. (Except for Spike Lee, who buys his tickets.) They can afford to comp the best seats in the house.
It won't be an indictment of Spurs fans when half of the arena looks like Penn Station.
The modern era of sports trends toward the affluent and the fan bases with massive numbers, often a byproduct of being in the most populous areas, simply have more affluence among them.
According to March 2026 data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Home Ownership Affordability Monitor, the Bay Area boasts the two cities with the highest media household incomes of the 50 most-populous metropolitan areas in the U.S.
The median household incomes in San Jose ($175,491) and San Francisco ($141,277) are bolstered by Silicon Valley. New York ($103,166) ranks 12th.
The national median income is $85,828. San Antonio ($82,130) ranks 29th. Only 10 of the 30 NBA cities ranked above the national average.
While household income isn't a perfect metric, it paints a picture of what we already understand to be true. Every area has its wealthy contingent. But we know where people and money are often concentrated.
New York, per New World Wealth's the 2025 wealthiest cities report, leads America with 384,500 millionaires, followed closely by the Bay Area with 342,400. Los Angeles ranks fifth with 220,600 and Chicago 10th with 127,100.
Again, not a perfect metric. But a picture of the puzzle. Only nine NBA cities made the top-50 list.
The average person in most fan bases especially can't participate in the financial investment of postseason basketball. Once the prices skyrocket, they can't afford to be loyally present. And many of the ones who can certainly can't afford not to sell if some well-off New Yorkers, or techsters from Silicon Valley, or Hollywood types want to give them a month of bills for their tickets.
It's a reality even Christmas can't ignore. He knows he's the exception.
“It was almost a road game for us,†Carlos Christmas said of Knicks fans taking over San Antonio. “That pissed me off. It made me angry.†(Photo courtesy of Carlos Christmas)
He's a professional barber who's done well enough as a business man to restrict his client list. He was also born and raised in San Antonio, on the northeast side, and grew up playing hoop. At Roosevelt High, he said he once scored 13 points in nine minutes against Madison when his coach let him go at future NBA big man Jeff Foster. So these games, these moments, this team he loves, is a bit more personal.
But business is business for most.
“I would be fake if I said I didn't understand,†Christmas said. “If you're a person with some tickets and someone offers you all that money, of course I can see why you'd sell. People need that money. You don't know what a person is going through. And if you're a person that deals with numbers and money, it's the ultimate return on investment.â€
For generations, fandom took root in a place. People inherited the teams in their city, passed down from their families, indoctrinated by their neighborhoods. A stadium survived as one of the few institutions where a factory worker and a CEO could rub elbows and spill beer on each other. Where children could bond with their elders and fall in love with the sounds and smells and scenery of sports.
But the business of sports has replaced, is replacing, the employees of America in stadium crowds with executives. The seats that often went to kids increasingly get filled by clients. The true fans now get painted as the ones who can afford to spend four figures on tickets, book a last-minute flight on price-gouging airlines, take time off work, snatch up a downtown hotel for a couple of days and still have money left over for merch and alcohol.
For some of these fans, it's cheaper to do it in a smaller city like San Antonio when they're used to the more exorbitant prices of their home regions.
In an era of inflation, rising cost of living and widespread economic anxiety, the true fans of yesteryear watch from couches across America. Because “it's sort of semi-free to watch it on television,†President Donald Trump told reporters last week. “That's the way life goes.â€
Glad he said semi-free. Because for many sports fans, the annual fees of the required streaming accounts are getting to be excessive.
But if they're too broke for streaming prices, they can still watch highlights, per NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
Nobody cares about the fans who can't afford to ride with the squad they love. Their place isn't being preserved. That's been proved by franchises that relocate and leave them behind. By the dynamic pricing that excludes them from the experience or pillages their wallets with overpriced food and exorbitant parking when they arrive. By the way they're subtly disparaged for not being financially irresponsible to declare their fanaticism.
So while it's cool to witness the Knicks fans show up and show out in opposing arenas, and embrace the history unfolding, let's avoid misconstruing their capacity as the home fans' indifference.
Because sports are no longer about love and emotion. They are mostly about money. The biggest games, the greatest stages, have been quartered off by a velvet rope. More an experience for the big-walleted and less a reward for the loyal.
And we can't blame Spurs fans, or any fans, for selling and experience that's already been sold out.
