Hochul blasts Ticketmaster, Spurs over ticket ban for Knicks fans

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul moved to frame the Spurs’ Game 5 ticket rule as more than a home-court preference, attacking a restriction that shut out many Knicks fans from buying seats at the NBA Finals. The dispute landed at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio just as New York chased its first NBA title in 53 years, turning a championship game into a test of who gets access and who gets locked out.

Ticketmaster’s listing for the game said sales were restricted to customers residing within 150 miles of Frost Bank Center, with residency checked against the billing address. Some reports said orders placed from outside that radius could be canceled without notice and refunded. Hochul said thousands of Knicks fans had already bought tickets and booked flights in good faith, then publicly urged the Spurs and Ticketmaster to reverse course and let those seats stand.

The Spurs said the 150-mile rule had already been in place throughout the playoffs and was meant to prioritize local fans in San Antonio, Austin and surrounding communities. That explanation did little to quiet criticism from New York, where the policy looked less like a neutral venue rule and more like a digital gatekeeping tool controlled by a ticketing giant and a team with broad discretion over who can buy.

The backlash widened because the same local-sales policy had not kept Knicks fans out of Games 1 and 2 of the Finals. That history made the Game 5 restriction look selective rather than absolute, raising questions about whether the policy was designed to preserve a home atmosphere or to steer access in a way that could disadvantage traveling fans and inflate scarcity.

By early afternoon on June 13, 2026, Ticketmaster appeared to soften its stance after the criticism intensified. The reversal underscored how much power a platform can wield over access to major events, especially when a team’s sales rules intersect with already punishing secondary-market prices and demand so intense that average tickets for some Knicks home Finals games topped $10,000. In a series built on scarcity, the fight over Game 5 became a broader argument about fairness, transparency and who sports business is really built to serve.