When St. John\u2019s began to execute the revised season ticket plan for the 2025-26 men\u2019s basketball season, it was very public about their cost rising 30% from a year ago. Their value, however, has risen right along with it.<\/p>\n
The Red Storm home schedule now includes eight Big East games plus four non-conference dates at Madison Square Garden \u2014 an exhibition with Michigan and\u00a0games against Alabama, Ole Miss and Iona \u2014 and coach Rick Pitino assembled a team very likely to open the season ranked nationally in the top 10.<\/p>\n
And now those season tickets may become even more valuable.<\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s is in a dialogue with the Garden about moving two more games to the World\u2019s Most Famous Arena and playing its entire 10-game conference schedule there. The current plan the school is looking to expand on has 12 dates at MSG (including Seton Hall on a date not yet determined). Big East games against DePaul and Butler could be relocated from Carnesecca Arena on campus to the Garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the reason the pricing is not finalized is: the more Garden games we have, the more expensive it\u2019s going to be,\u201d St. John\u2019s AD Ed Kull told Newsday. \u201cWe’re currently looking at approximately 12 games and, I\u2019m not going to lie when I tell you we want 14.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand that people get [angry]\u00a0and ask \u2018Ed, why don’t you just release the full schedule?\u2019 but there\u2019s a lot to it, just like every year,\u201d he added. \u201cThe Knicks and Rangers go first \u2014 they get first dibs, so we have to be flexible \u2014 and then there is television to factor in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kull was asked if he\u2019s comfortable playing no Big East games on campus and replied, \u201cI have no problem with that if we can work it out well. This is the right year to do it, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Storm played nine Garden dates in the 2024-25 regular season with an average attendance of 16,994 in the 19,812-seat arena including selling out the final three. There were non-sellouts that exceeded 19,000, 18,000 and 17,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you get the fans back? Form a team [and]\u00a0we\u2019re a team with the Garden,\u201d Pitino said after a win over Creighton before a sellout crowd. \u201cWe wanted the Garden to own St. John\u2019s [and]\u00a0. . . the Garden is our home.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s sent some shivers through its fan base in the spring when it announced season ticket holders would be reseated based on a points system. It said points would be based on years of season-ticket loyalty as well as several kinds of giving to support athletics, NIL efforts and the university.<\/p>\n
No holdover season ticket holder will be jumped in the distribution order by a newcomer, Kull said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re making sure all the active season ticket holders get priority and they get all their seats first,\u201d Kull said. \u201cThe new season ticket holders . . . will go after. I need the fan base to understand that because there have been misperceptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of active season ticket holders seem to believe that if a new season ticket holder gave enough money, they would jump some of the old season ticket holders and that\u2019s just not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kull estimated that an active season ticket holder who hadn\u2019t been a big donor would be seated no worse than section 108 in the Garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s where I sat for the whole Big East Tournament,\u201d Kull said.<\/p>\n
The hope is that season-ticket growth is extensive enough that the returners fill up the lower bowl at the Garden.<\/p>\n
And St. John\u2019s will have a bunch of new season ticket holders, Kull estimated 2,500 have enlisted to become one and that\u2019s on top of the approximately 5,600 that were in place from last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time,\u201d Kull said. \u201cYou can really feel an energy around this upcoming season.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tRoger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When St. John\u2019s began to execute the revised season ticket plan for the 2025-26 men\u2019s basketball season, it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,1976,4044,398,400,401,99,10151,13092],"class_list":["post-13505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-college","tag-college-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports","tag-st-johns","tag-tickets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}