By Marcus Thompson II | The Athletic, 2026-06-13 09:50:28
圣安东尼奥——50岁的卡洛斯·克里斯马斯 (Carlos Christmas) 甚至懒得去查看他用来管理季票的马刺官方App。他在客队球员通道附近拥有一对季票，每年大约要花费1万美元。这款由Ticketmaster运营的App能让他随时了解自己所在区域座位的转售价值。
在季后赛前几轮，转售市场并没有什么波澜。他说，直到西部决赛对阵俄克拉荷马城的生死攸关的第六场，转售价格预计将飙升至6000美元以上时，事情才变得有趣起来。
但是到了NBA总决赛呢？他本以为在这样的盛大场合，每一个有幸拥有门票的人都会亲临现场。这是为他们的马刺呐喊助威的时刻。然而，第一场和第二场的经历却给了他当头一棒。
“这几乎成了我们的客场，”克里斯马斯说，“这让我很不爽，让我感到愤怒。”
于是，出于纯粹的好奇，克里斯马斯查看了App，想看看周六在霜冻银行球馆进行的第五场比赛中，他的门票在市场上的行情。他简直不敢相信自己的眼睛。他的门票市场价已经突破了3万美元。而且是单张价格。
他说，截至周五晚上，他那对门票的价格已经降到了单张2万美元。这意味着他可以通过卖掉这两个座位变现4万美元。他已经现场见证了本赛季32场主场胜利中的许多场，以及11场主场季后赛。而现在，他依然可以赚回相当于他购票成本四倍的收益。
即便如此，他还是无法狠下心卖掉。他就是做不到。
“绝对不行！”他说，“对我来说，这简直是对我支持的球员的极度不尊重。我是个铁杆球迷。从1999年夺冠前后开始，我们家就一直拥有季票。我和这支球队紧密相连。而且这可是NBA总决赛。在总决赛里，你怎么能这样对待自己的球队？”
随着尼克斯有夺冠的可能，圣安东尼奥的橙蓝浪潮预计在第五场会更加汹涌。购票网站的数据显示，超过一半的门票交易都流向了账单地址为纽约和新泽西邮编的信用卡。
这种“客场入侵”往往被浪漫化为顶级球迷文化的体现，被视为对篮球运动热爱的缩影。当球馆里挤满了对手球队的代表色时，那场面确实震撼。用声浪淹没主场球迷，是一种极具压迫感的实力炫耀。
旧金山49人的球迷经常对NFL的对手上演这一幕。金州勇士的球迷在NBA中也以大规模随队远征而闻名。洛杉矶道奇的球衣填满了全国各地MLB球场的看台。多伦多枫叶的球迷则会占领对手的冰球馆。
这些忠实的拥趸值得我们脱帽致敬，其中也包括那些将这种狂热推向新高度的尼克斯球迷。他们完全主宰了这一刻，这是他们大半辈子甚至一生都在等待的时刻。即使对于那些并不特别富裕的人来说，这也是唯一值得他们挥金如土的大事。
“我对这种支持的感激之情，恐怕用言语永远无法表达，”杰伦·布伦森 (Jalen Brunson) 周五在谈到客场球迷的支持时说道，“真的非常感激，非常谢谢大家。这是一种非常酷的体验。就像我说的，这是一种你无法真正用言语描述的感受。你必须亲自去体验它。”
这确实彰显了体育凝聚人心的精神、社区的力量，甚至可能预示着在这个极度分裂的时代，这个国家在另一端实现共存的潜力。
但这种“占领客场”的现象也凸显了美国最显著的分水岭之一：经济。现代体育的商业化已经发展到了这样一个阶段：能否亲临现场，不仅取决于你的热情，更取决于你的购买力。这是一个由亿万富翁主导的行业所制造的扭曲现实。
尼克斯球迷的优势在于基数庞大且财力雄厚。这是一场数字游戏。仅仅凭借纽约市拥有近900万人口以及全美最庞大的百万富翁群体这一事实，他们中能够承受高昂票价的球迷比例自然就更高。
尼克斯赚得盆满钵满，以至于俱乐部甚至不向坐在场边席的身家数百万的明星们收费。（除了斯派克·李 (Spike Lee)，他是自己买票的。）他们完全负担得起免费赠送全场最好位置的成本。
当半个球馆看起来像纽约宾夕法尼亚车站时，这并不能归咎于马刺球迷不够忠诚。
现代体育时代正向富裕阶层倾斜，而那些拥有庞大基数的球迷群体（通常是身处人口最稠密地区的副产品），其内部自然拥有更多的富裕人口。
根据亚特兰大联邦储备银行住房支付能力监测数据2026年3月的数据，湾区拥有全美50个最稠密大都市区中家庭收入中位数最高的两座城市。
在硅谷的加持下，圣何塞（175,491美元）和旧金山（141,277美元）的家庭收入中位数名列前茅。纽约（103,166美元）排名第12位。
全美中位数收入为85,828美元。圣安东尼奥（82,130美元）排名第29位。在30个拥有NBA球队的城市中，只有10个城市的收入高于全国平均水平。
虽然家庭收入并不是一个完美的衡量标准，但它勾勒出了我们早已心知肚明的现实。每个地区都有其富裕群体。但我们很清楚，人口和财富往往集中在哪些地方。
根据新世界财富（New World Wealth）发布的2025年最富有城市报告，纽约以384,500名百万富翁领跑全美，湾区以342,400名紧随其后。洛杉矶以220,600名排名第五，芝加哥以127,100名排名第十。
这同样不是一个完美的指标，但它是拼图中的重要一块。在拥有NBA球队的城市中，只有9个进入了前50名榜单。
大多数球迷群体中的普通人，根本无法参与到季后赛篮球这种高昂的资金投入中。一旦票价飙升，他们就无法负担用亲临现场来表达忠诚的代价。而对于许多负担得起的人来说，如果一些富裕的纽约人、硅谷的科技新贵或好莱坞的名流愿意用相当于他们一个月生活开销的巨款来买他们的门票，他们也实在无法拒绝这种诱惑。
这是连克里斯马斯也无法忽视的现实。他知道自己只是个例外。
“这几乎成了我们的客场，”卡洛斯·克里斯马斯在谈到尼克斯球迷占领圣安东尼奥时说，“这让我很不爽，让我感到愤怒。”（照片由卡洛斯·克里斯马斯提供）
他是一名专业理发师，作为一名商人，他的生意做得足够成功，甚至可以筛选自己的客户名单。他也是在圣安东尼奥东北部土生土长的，从小打球长大。在罗斯福高中时期，他说有一次在对阵麦迪逊高中的比赛中，当教练放手让他去对抗未来的NBA大个子杰夫·福斯特 (Jeff Foster) 时，他在9分钟内砍下了13分。因此，这些比赛、这些时刻，以及他所热爱的这支球队，对他而言有着更为特殊的个人情感。
但对大多数人来说，生意就是生意。
“如果我说我不理解，那就是在装高尚了，”克里斯马斯说，“如果你手里有几张票，而有人开出那么高的价钱，我当然完全能理解你为什么要卖。人们需要那笔钱。你不知道别人正在经历什么。而且，如果你是一个和数字、金钱打交道的人，这就是终极的投资回报。”
几代人以来，球迷文化都是在特定的地方生根发芽的。人们继承了自己城市的球队，代代相传，并受到街坊邻里的熏陶。体育场曾是少数几个能让工厂工人和企业CEO并肩而坐、把啤酒洒在彼此身上的场所之一。在这里，孩子们可以与长辈建立深厚的感情，并爱上体育运动的声音、气味和场景。
但体育商业化已经并将继续用企业高管取代体育场观众席上的美国普通员工。过去常常留给孩子们的座位，越来越多地被商务客户填满。如今，真正的球迷被重新定义为那些能够轻松掏出四位数买门票、在航空公司漫天要价时订下最后时刻的机票、向单位请假、在市中心酒店住上几天，并且还能剩下钱来购买周边商品和美酒的人。
对于其中一些球迷来说，在圣安东尼奥这样的小城市看球反而更便宜，因为他们已经习惯了自己家乡地区更为高昂的物价。
在这个通货膨胀、生活成本上升和经济焦虑普遍存在的时代，昔日的真正球迷只能在全美各地的沙发上观看比赛。因为“在电视上看比赛算是半免费的，”唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump) 总统上周告诉记者，“生活就是这样。”
很高兴他用了“半免费”这个词。因为对许多体育迷来说，订阅那些必不可少的流媒体账号所需的年费，已经变得越来越难以承受。
不过，按照NBA总裁亚当·肖华 (Adam Silver) 的说法，如果他们穷得连流媒体都订阅不起，他们仍然可以看集锦。
没有人关心那些无力追随自己挚爱球队的球迷。他们的位置并没有被保留。那些搬迁并抛弃当地球迷的职业球队已经证明了这一点。动态定价将他们排除在现场体验之外，或者在他们到达时用高得离谱的食物价格和天价停车费洗劫他们的钱包。甚至，当他们不愿为了宣示自己的狂热而做出财务上不理智的举动时，还会受到隐晦的贬低。
因此，虽然目睹尼克斯球迷在客场球馆大出风头、见证历史的诞生是一件很酷的事情，但我们也要避免将他们的购买力误读为主场球迷的冷漠。
因为体育早已不再仅仅关乎热爱和情感。它们在很大程度上只关乎金钱。最重大的比赛、最伟大的舞台，已经被一根天鹅绒警戒线隔开。这更像是为钱包鼓鼓的人准备的体验，而不再是对忠实拥趸的奖赏。
我们不能责怪马刺球迷，或者任何球队的球迷，去转售一种早已被商业化彻底出卖的体验。
由生成式人工智能翻译，译文内容可能不准确或不完整，以原文为准。
点击查看原文：What Knicks fans taking over road arenas really says about the modern sports experience
What Knicks fans taking over road arenas really says about the modern sports experience
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.”
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?”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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 an experience that’s already been sold out.
By Marcus Thompson II, via The Athletic