It happens to everyone – you buy tickets for a sporting event and then you are forced to go see family and need to sell the tickets. For many of us StubHub is the website where we post our tickets in hopes of reselling them. However, some professional sporting teams are penalizing ticket holders who resell their tickets on websites such as StubHub.
The New Jersey Devils have been named in a class action complaint claiming that the team violates state law by restricting the resale of individual tickets by season ticket holders. The team designates Ticketmaster as its exclusive ticket reseller, and cancels season tickets when fans resell tickets by other means. The lawsuit alleges that the Devil’s restriction on the resale violates explicit protections to ticket holders’ rights under New Jersey statutes.
Like many professional teams, the Devils are seeking to control the secondary market for game tickets. Where there is money to be made these organization want a piece of it. The outcome of this lawsuit could potentially affect the pricing and availability of tickets for certain events on the secondary market.