Billy Joel will end his decade-long residency at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, but fans of the New York favorite still have a chance to snag tickets before the show.
Face value tickets have long been sold out, but resale tickets are still available. However, anyone hoping to see the Bronx-born, Long Island-raised superstar will need to fork over hundreds of dollars just to get inside the building.
On Ticketmaster, verified resale tickets started at around $550 on Tuesday afternoon. On Stubhub, tickets cost about $570 including fees, while the cheapest tickets on SeatGeek were about $620 with fees included.
On VividSeats, the lowest price was also about $550 including fees, while on Gametime the cheapest tickets cost about $580.
Joel, 75, had previously promised to continue playing shows at MSG until people stopped coming. But he was apparently unprepared for people to keep coming and coming and coming for more than 10 years.
“Who are these people? Where are they coming from? Is everybody in the world coming here? Because they keep coming,” Joel told the Daily News in 2021. “They keep buying tickets. I was asked, ‘How long will this residency last?’ And I said, ‘As long as there’s ticket demand, or as long as I can physically do it.'”
It was seemingly the second qualification that forced Joel to end his residency, a decision he announced in June 2023, alongside MSG owner James Dolan.
But the end of the famous MSG residency does not mean Joel’s touring career is over. He still has another five shows scheduled across the country during the rest of 2024: Sept. 13 in Cleveland; Sept. 27 in St. Louis; Oct. 12 in Los Angeles; Oct. 25 in San Antonio and Nov. 9 in Las Vegas.
Tickets to the Cleveland show, geographically closest to New York, cost only about $100 on Ticketmaster as of Tuesday afternoon.
Thursday night’s show will be Joel’s 150th at MSG. He first performed in the building on Christmas Eve 1978, and kicked off his record-shattering residency in 2014.
“Billy, although the residency is coming to an end, we look forward to an exciting closing run to celebrate all that you’ve accomplished,” Dolan said in 2023. “And forever welcoming you back home to the Garden anytime — anytime — you’d like.”
