WNBA LA Sparks, AXS Accused of Cancelling Season Tickets to Resell at Higher Prices

The Los Angeles Sparks and ticketing partner AXS are scrambling to reassure fans after an email circulating on Reddit suggested the WNBA franchise was voiding 2025 season-ticket packages so it could re-sell the same seats at higher prices.

The message, signed by Sparks senior vice-president Jerry Murphy, told the recipient that “we are working with our AXS ticketing partner to refund the full amount of your payment(s)… All LA Sparks tickets are revocable licenses.” It added that the club had “determined that we need to make some adjustments” as interest in the WNBA surges.

The email prompted immediate backlash online, with many accusing the team of a bait-and-switch designed to exploit soaring demand driven by the league’s recent growth.

Late Tuesday, AXS acknowledged it had “inadvertently” canceled a block of accounts that “appeared to be purchased fraudulently,” saying the decision triggered automatic refunds and was never intended as a price hike. “We are working closely with the Sparks to restore those season tickets,” the company said in a statement the team reposted on X, calling earlier reports “misinformation.”

A familiar playbook

While the Sparks insist the mix-up was a fraud-prevention glitch, rights-holders revoking long-held seats and reselling them at a premium has become a fact of life in recent years as organizations have openly embraced surged “dynamic” ticket price models and “platinum” upcharges for tickets.

Some examples:

• Los Angeles Dodgers: In 2018 the MLB club was sued after canceling thousands of broker and fan season-ticket accounts, then funneled the inventory to a single resale partner with higher list prices, a move plaintiffs said “monopolized the secondary market.” (TicketNews)
• Vancouver Canucks: Last summer the NHL franchise yanked hundreds of season-ticket memberships it said were being “misused” for resale, a purge critics blasted as a “cash grab” that let the team remarket the same seats at today’s rates. (TicketNews)
• Houston Texans: A group of 19 Personal Seat License owners sued the franchise after it enacted new rules limiting their right to resell tickets they have owned for years while simultaneously raising its own ticket prices to “market” levels. (TicketNews).
• New York Yankees: The organization lost a lawsuit filed by multiple parties who had their season tickets cancelled over allegedly reselling too often – which is against the law in the state of New York. (Ticket News)

Consumer advocates argue the practice effectively turns loyal season-ticket holders into short-term lenders, giving clubs interest-free capital before pushing them aside when prices spike.

The WNBA is experiencing record demand — league attendance is up more than 60 percent year-over-year, and the Sparks’ home opener at Crypto.com Arena sold out weeks in advance. Season tickets, which started at roughly $15 per game only a few seasons ago, now run well north of $600 for lower-bowl seats. With former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark and other young players driving a league-wide surge, resale values for marquee games have climbed even faster.

One Reddit user who posted the message said Wednesday the team had restored their seats at the original price, but others in the thread reported still waiting on updates. (Reddit)

AXS said refunds should reverse automatically within “approximately 21 business days,” and the Sparks told followers to reach out directly if their accounts remain affected. Fans whose tickets were canceled will have to re-download them once they reappear in their AXS wallets.

Whether the snafu was a genuine fraud filter misfire or an aborted price-increase strategy, experts warn it underscores how little protection season-ticket holders have once teams label tickets as revocable licenses.

“Unless lawmakers step in, teams will keep using cancellation threats to harvest inventory for higher-margin channels,” one industry analyst told TicketNews. “It’s become standard operating procedure.”