NEW YORK — Warren Tubbs, 51, of Bayonne, N.J., has held a season ticket for Knicks home games since 2011. He believes in the market the way other people believe in gravity: it happens, and nobody is to blame. On Tuesday at 7 p.m., he will watch the home opener against the 76ers from Section 209, in a seat he bought on the resale market for $2,600.
“Prices are prices,” Tubbs said Monday. “If the market says a seat is worth $2,600, then it is worth $2,600, and anybody who says otherwise is a price-control person.”
Resale data show the average price for the opener at about $2,600, nearly four times last season’s average of $681. Across the team’s 2026-27 home schedule, average resale prices are up 78 percent from a year earlier. Opening-week averages are $1,212, second in the league behind the 76ers, against a league-wide average of $326.
The team paused ticket sales after an error listed some seats at prices higher than intended. It said it would roll them back to last year’s prices plus an average increase of 12 percent, and that buyers who had already purchased individual tickets would be refunded the difference.
Tubbs said he was not upset about the error. He was upset about the refund. He said the difference between his $2,600 and the corrected price was a sum the market had already settled, and that the Knicks should not be returning it to him as if it were a mistake. He has asked the team to refund him the market instead, which he described as a fair request under the same principles that set the $2,600 price in the first place.
A spokesperson for the ticket office said the team could not refund a market, and suggested that Tubbs take the matter up with the market directly. The spokesperson did not say how to reach the market. Tubbs said he would try its website.
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, reviewed the resale figures and said the Center had found no seat in the sample whose price had been set by anyone who had seen the seat. “Mr. Tubbs’s position is consistent with itself, which is more than most positions manage,” Teller said. “It is consistent only as long as no one asks him to refund it. Further study is needed, and the Center has applied for the funding.”
Tubbs said he planned to stand for the anthem Tuesday and for the banner before it. He said he had paid for both at market rate, and that he expected to be treated as a customer for each.