A Sixers fan is messing with Amtrak’s pricing model to keep Knicks fans out

Last Sunday, a 31-year-old Sixers fan named Matt was driving from his parents’ house in South Jersey to his home in Fishtown when an idea popped into his mind.

He was talking to his brother, Aaron, on the phone. The 76ers had just won Game 7 against the Celtics in Boston, and the siblings were feeling optimistic about their team’s playoff chances.

Until they saw the schedule for Round 2 against the Knicks. As Matt exited I-95 at Exit 23, it dawned on him that Games 3 and 4 at Xfinity Mobile Arena fell on a weekend.

» READ MORE: Three Sixers keys for Game 3 against the Knicks to avoid an 0-3 deficit: ‘Got to go home and get two’

Matt was well-aware of how convenient it would be for New Yorkers to make the trip down via Amtrak.

He’d traveled the opposite route to attend Sixers games at Madison Square Garden. Sunday’s Game 4, in particular, would be a problem; with a 3:30 p.m. tip, Matt believed it would be easy for Knicks fans to get a train back to New York that night.

Game 4s were generally also cheaper than Game 3s.

As a ride-or-die devotee of the Sixers’ controversial «Trust the Process» era, who bought his season-ticket package during the 10-win season of 2015-16, Matt couldn’t stomach the thought of Philadelphia turning into a sea of orange and blue.

Especially not after center Joel Embiid made a postgame plea for fans to not sell their tickets.

So, Matt decided to get creative.

What if fans bought flex tickets on Amtrak — fully refundable if canceled before departure — to increase the dynamic pricing for Knicks fans? So the “price-conscious Knicks fans,” as he called them, would be priced out?

When he got home, Matt logged onto Reddit and posted his idea on r/Sixers. It immediately resonated.

“Just pick a time you’d think you’d pick if you were a Knicks fan looking to make the 3:30 start time and get back home after,” he wrote, under the username ‘InHinkieITrust.’ “Click that ‘Flex’ option. Book the tickets. Hit that cancel button an hour or so before departure (set multiple alarms for this). Can’t hurt if we all do this.”

This is not the first time Matt has been part of a small revolution on Sixers Reddit.

In 2018, he and a handful of other Process diehards, stung by the ouster of general manager Sam Hinkie in favor of Bryan Colangelo, organized a “Fire Colangelo” protest at the Sixers facility in Camden.

» READ MORE: Sam Hinkie’s 13-page Sixers resignation letter is 10 years old. Dr. Atul Gawande was shocked to see his name in it.

Only a handful of people showed up — the protest was held at 12:30 p.m. on a weekday — but they made their point.

After a security guard told them to leave, Matt and his cohorts walked across the street from the facility and continued their protest there for about two hours.

“Good times,” he recalled.

He grew up a Sixers fan, but became more involved with the team during the Hinkie era. To Matt, the Process was a way forward for a team mired in mediocrity.

“When he kind of laid it out and I looked at how the league was going, I was like, this is ingenious,” Matt said. “This gives us the best chance of not being an 8-seed, 9-seed forever.

“The Process … there was a lot of hope. Actual hope. Before, like the [Andrew] Bynum thing broke a ton of Sixers fans. And then Hinkie comes in and actually offers up a pathway out of the NBA purgatory.”

After buying his season-ticket package in 2015-16, Matt started attending 15 to 20 home games per year, plus playoff games. This gave him ample opportunity to familiarize himself with the “Bing Bong” contingent, a rallying cry among Knicks fans that can lead to mob-like behavior after games.

It was not a pleasant experience.

» READ MORE: Sixers release single-game tickets with restrictions for second-round series vs. Knicks

“I was at all the games last year, I had season tickets, so you kind of get all the price-conscious Knicks fans too,” he said. “Sometimes, they’re sitting in the seats at the top of the stadium. They’re the TikTok hungry Knicks fans, because they have the ‘Bing Bong’ thing. It’s pretty obnoxious, to be honest.

“Leaving the game [two years ago], it was just like — they do a flash mob thing. Your season ends and then they mob you. Even outside of MSG now they have betting companies sponsoring it.

“Now, everyone is just doing it for social media. What kind of sucks about the takeover stuff is they come down for the clout of it. Before, you could pay $50 more and just go to a game at MSG. It wasn’t even that much of a price difference.”

In Matt’s mind, if this dynamic pricing makes it even a little bit less convenient for New Yorkers, it will have been worth it. His friends have all purchased flex tickets. So has his brother, Aaron, who took his purchase a step further.

“He actually was pretty smart about it,” Matt said. “He booked a family of four. Two kids, two adults.”

When reached for comment, Amtrak provided a statement:

“This practice violates Amtrak’s ticketing terms. Making multiple or speculative bookings with the intent to cancel, referred to as duplicate or impossible bookings, is not permitted.

“Amtrak actively monitors its reservation system for this type of activity. When identified, Amtrak may cancel excess reservations and retain only the most recent booking. Cancellations may occur with or without notice, and any refunds are subject to the fare rules associated with the ticket purchased.“

Matt has checked Amtrak’s website over the last few days and noticed that the prices on Sunday have spiked. Whether this is because of the fan’s scheme, or because of an increased demand due to the playoff series, is unclear.

But to this Process lifer, there’s no harm in trying.

“I don’t think it’s going to have that big of an impact,” Matt said. “But sometimes there are these little micro things. … If somebody up north decides not to come down because it’s like, ‘Ah actually, I can go for the same price to an [MSG] game,’ then that’s good. Stay up there. Let a Sixers fan go.”