The Barclays Center was a fortress for the New York Liberty. A 17-5 regular-season home record was one of the biggest reasons fans and analysts were betting on Liberty to get the job done in Game 2. Instead, the Mercury blew out the Liberty by 26 points as the game finished 86-60. After the game, Kahleah Copper and Satou Sabally sent some shots at the Liberty fanbase.“Honestly, I was shocked, I don’t think it was loud to start. I don’t know. I was shocked. I was expecting us to have to like, deal with some courtside people. It was quiet.” Copper said.
It was not only her, as Sabally was asked what it’s gonna be like to play a series-deciding game at home in front of Phoenix fans. While praising the intense Phoenix crowd, she went right for the Liberty jugular, “Loud. Louder than here.” And she later said, “The vibe [in Phoenix] is unmatched… Today, when you looked in the stands, they were already leaving a little bit. Our fans would never leave. They’re there, they’re backing us up, they’re talking from the sidelines. It’s different. It’s different.” The New York Liberty is historically known to have a ferocious home crowd, but WNBA insider Khristina Williams revealed two main reasons why it was not present at the Playoffs.
Williams said on the Good Follow Podcast with RosGold Onwude, “Before the game, a few (fans) came up to me and said, ‘Hey, we weren’t able to afford to renew our playoff tickets because it was just too expensive.’ So for one part of it, I think that maybe some of the faithful fans just was not in the building because they couldn’t afford to come see the playoffs. That’s one part of it.”
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The ticket row between the Liberty fans and the management has been in the news for months. At their final regular-season game, dozens of fans wore bright orange shirts with the words “We’ve been priced out.” The average cost per game for season ticket holders has risen from approximately $55 in 2024 to about $97 in 2025, representing a 76% increase. There is a star mark to this, as fans with 3+ years had their increase capped at 25%. In any case, this bump left many of their core fanbase behind, who couldn’t afford such a steep increase.
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As far as the playoff game against Mercury is concerned, ticket prices for Game 2 started at $34 while going as high as $5,039. Compared to that, Game 1 at the PHX arena had a lower limit of $26 and could reach up to $1,180. Don’t get hung up on the base price as the fans are paying for an experience, and the real squeeze is hitting the mid‑tier, which has climbed hard from $50-55 per game to $80–$85(tiers: Upper Bowl, Lower Bowl, Courtside). While the Liberty is bleeding fanbase because of the prices, there is another reason for the lack of excitement.
Williams further said, “I think that the energy went down because the Liberty wasn’t really giving the fans anything to cheer for. And so people were leaving out of that building, second quarter, third quarter, and it was really sad to see because usually when you’re at Barclays, it’s packed. People were cheering on the team, good or bad, but I think the fans are just as fed up with how the Liberty are playing as everyone else is these days. So that was the gist of it.”
The New York Liberty are on a slippery slope. They have raised the season ticket prices further, with the cost for some seats going from $600 in 2024 to $1700 next season. As a nasty parallel to this cost increase, the Liberty is no longer the same title-winning team from last year. In 2024, they finished with a 32-8 record as a top seed.
As compared to that, 2025 has been timid. They more than doubled their losses, finishing with a 27-17 record while slipping to No.5. They are not in the trenches yet, but with both problems colliding, the fans are losing interest. To add another blow, the Liberty lost 35-23 in that second half after losing the second quarter 26-12 against the Mercury. The performance was deflating enough to be the final blow to the declining interest.
Ring and reset: How New York Liberty Can Reignite Interest
The justification of this spike in price is simple, as far as the owners are concerned: “business”., “We consider this so comprehensively from a pricing standpoint, but most importantly, a study of secondary market pricing,” Liberty CEO Keia Clarke said, “This is market demand 101, and it’s really a surge in popularity of this league. Paying attention to what the customers were willing to pay in the secondary and in the primary is really a driver of where we are at the moment.”
It’s no secret that the WNBA as a whole has gone to another level in the last two years. The popularity is increasing at a rapid pace, which has propelled the Liberty to build a 75,000-square-foot training facility in Green Point, which costs $80 million. Hence, the increase in ticket prices.. To be fair to Liberty, it’s not just them. A representative from Vivid Seats, a secondary ticket sale marketplace, said it found a 43% league-wide increase in the average ticket price year-over-year this season. However, the atmosphere in other cities is only getting better, while we hear complaints regarding New York.
Two things could help the Liberty save face and retain their core. If they somehow win the 2025, the interest will come flowing back. The Liberty were at the other end of the spectrum in 2021; they had just moved to the Barclays Center in 2020 after two disappointing seasons in Westchester. 2020 was rock bottom with a league-worst record, losing all but two games throughout the year.
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But in 2021, the fans came back in and the team thrived, reaching its first playoffs in three years. Slowly, as the performance improved, the average attendance went from 1751 in 2021 and 7776 in 2023 when they lost the finals. That had a huge bump in their 2024 title-winning season to 12,729. In 2025, this has increased further to 16,323. Since the interest is dying, they need exceptional performance to bring it back.