MSG Holiday Festival Tickets

About MSG Holiday Festival

Madison Square Garden itself is about as iconic as you can get for time-honored American entertainment venues, having occupied its current location in midtown Manhattan since 1968. It has hosted some of the most legendary performers and sporting events of the last several decades. 

The MSG Holiday Festival is such an institution, it goes all the way back to the Garden's previous location, having begun its annual run in 1952. There's no substitute for tradition, especially in sports, and the tradition of the Festival makes it college basketball's longest-running in-season event in U.S. history. 

The Holiday Festival has happened every year in December since the Truman administration. It was inaugurated with the humble agenda of attracting enough revenue to allow its sponsor — the Eastern College Athletic Conference — to pay the rent on its office on New York's E. 43rd St. 

Needless to say, the Festival has come a very long way since those modest beginnings, and basketball lovers travel from far and wide to take part in the tradition and catch a pair of games where the best college teams around take each other on. 

Depending on which way the winds of fortune blow in any given year, the matchups fans get to watch might be between Army and Navy, between St. John's and Penn State, or between Rutgers and Arizona. But no matter which combination of teams ends up facing off against each other as part of the MSG Holiday Festival, basketball fans will be treated to incredible action featuring some of the best players in the nation.