StubHub, the U.S.’s largest ticket resale platform, has filed legal action against the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and event ticket vendor giant Ticketmaster, claiming that the duo’s decision to cancel tickets purchased through StubHub violated antitrust laws, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to ESPN, eBay’s StubHub unit filed legal action Sunday (March 29) against the Warriors, based in Oakland, California. StubHub said Ticketmaster harmed competition for event ticket sales because they would only validate tickets purchased through Ticketmaster and not through rivals.
Specifically, StubHub claims that Ticketmaster and the Warriors told fans with season tickets that they could not resell their passes on any platform other than Ticketmaster’s NBATickets.com. Further, according to the lawsuit, Ticketmaster and the NBA allegedly told these pass holders that if they did resell their tickets through a different platform, they would risk not being allowed to purchase season tickets in the future.
This tactic, StubHub claims, has led to an 80 percent drop in Warriors ticket sales through its service. About 65 percent of StubHub’s business comes from non-professional ticket sales, according to reports.
“If the anti-competitive actions complained herein are not stopped, Ticketmaster is likely to seek to replicate them with other teams,” court documents filed by StubHub said. “As a result, millions of Americans will be held captive to a monopoly secondary ticketing exchange.”
Reports say the Warriors and Ticketmaster have held a professional relationship since 2012, which began by sharing fees collected from Warriors’ ticket resales. This relationship, StubHub argues, means that the team and Ticketmaster unfairly control both the primary and secondary ticket sales markets.
In a statement responding to the suit, Ticketmaster president Jared Smith said the company is “disappointed” by the filing, slamming the allegations as “baseless,” made in an effort by StubHub to get the court “to prop up its business against true fan-friendly competition.”
Analysts at ESPN are describing the suit as one with the potential to become a landmark case in the sports ticket industry.
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