Geofencing

Protecting the home court is a must during the NBA post season and teams ask their fans to show up during games and support them the best way they can. Teams work hard for home court edge which can put pressure on players and game officials. A psychological advantage but this has been diminished of late.

In their sweeps of the Sixers and the Cavs, the New York Knicks benefited from fans who travelled for their road games. They occupied a good number of seats at the Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia and the Rocket Arena in Cleveland.

It’s not only New York going to opponents’ arenas. Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert had more than a thousand fans bused to Detroit for Game 7 and Cleveland advanced.

After the Knicks’ Game 1 comeback win, Cavs season ticket holders were sent emails saying access to the arena will be limited to fans with billing addresses in select Ohio, Philadelphia and New York areas.

Game 4 of the NYK-CLE series showed that support was not limited to the hardcourt but extended to the ticket office and the Cavaliers organization went to extreme measures in lessening NYK fans’ impact on the game. How extreme?

Despite holding courtside tickets, several NYK fans were denied courtside seating by arena officials upon realizing that they were from New York and took their tickets. They were then relocated to the third row. The move didn’t matter as NYK gave them the broom.

Aside from donating 500 tickets, the Sixers also used geographical limitations to help in ensuring crowd support by restricting sales by Zip codes during Games 3 and 4.This practice is known as ‘geofencing’ and NYK fans took this as a challenge. Reportedly, one NYK fan from Philadelphia spent more than $18,000 to help other fans get around the ZIP code restrictions.

New York won the attendance battle in both Philadelphia and Cleveland with loud “Let’s go Knicks!” chants reverberating in their arenas.They are not only rabid but they’re also practical.   They travel for road games as it is expensive to watch games at Madison Square Garden. NYK home playoff games cost 3 times more than Cleveland.

For the Finals, the cheapest seat for the June 8 Knicks Game 3 home game is $3,532. As of this writing, only 2 courtside seats priced at $80,254 per, are available and these prices are sure to go up as the game nears. Yes, MSG is the most expensive NBA arena.

For context, most NBA playoff teams use geofencing but fans found ways to circumvent the sales restrictions, buying then reselling them, which results in ridiculous ticket prices.