Apparently realizing the two were at a legal stalemate, the New England Patriots and secondary ticket company Stubhub have settled their three-year-old dispute over Patriots tickets being scalped on the resale giant.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but essentially both sides will continue with their positions of brokers and fans listing Patriots tickets on the Web site, and the Patriots stressing that it prohibits the resale of tickets to the team’s home games. The Patriots sued StubHub to have the tickets removed, and the team is reportedly continuing separate lawsuits against individuals who are reselling tickets.
“The settlement does not change in any way the Patriots’ policies prohibiting the resale of tickets to Patriots home games, or the Patriots’ ability to enforce those policies,” team spokesperson Stacey James said in a statement, reported by Massachusetts Web site CommonWealth Unbound.
The three-year-old case had been closely watched by the secondary ticket industry because it potentially could have severely restricted the resale of popular tickets on exchanges such as StubHub. While other sports teams have embraced the secondary market, or at least turned a blind eye to it, the Patriots were one of the only ones to aggressively go after online scalpers and brokers who were reselling its tickets. The settlement came in the form of a stipulation of dismissal motion the two sides mutually filed in court earlier this month.
At one point, StubHub was forced to turn over the names and sale information of more than 13,000 people who bought or resold Patriots tickets through the Web site, but the team never disclosed what it intended to do with those names.
“The settlement will not change our business model. StubHub supports the independent marketplace for ticket sales,” said StubHub spokesperson Sean Pate in a statement.
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Glad to see that Stub was willing to fight this one out – unlike TicketsNow which seems to want to end the secondary market ( except of course through TM VIP packages ) they were willing to take a stance.
They took a lot of flak when they *had* to release the names, but hey – it was under the power of a court order – not much you can do at that point unless you want the local sherrifs to confiscate your computers…
Again – WTG Stub!
Screw Stubhub. Was hoping more action would be taken against the scalping giant. I’m sick of paying 5X face value every time i want to go to an event. Stubhub is no more than a safe haven for scalpers and should be brought down. True fans should have access to tickets at the intended market price, not money hungry scalpers who care nothing about a band or a team, just getting as fat as they can from their fans. The only way tickets should be resold, in my opinion, is within 10 or 20 percent of the original price with fees. Stubhub is also to blame for inflation with fees that are outrageous which also drive up the prices like mad. The only reason more teams aren’t going after Stubhub is because the teams are profiting from resale through deals made with Stubhub. I’m glad to see at least one state/ team trying to work against these actions. I just wish there were more.
then don’t go. i want to go and am willing to pay for it, why shouldn’t i be given the opportunity?
there are a lot of tickets for the preseason game that are selling at 90% below cost. don’t see anyone complaining. also the SRO tickets to regular season games are selling at close to face value, buy those. if you mean you think you should be entitled to lower level mid field seats at face value, you are out of your mind
Why shouldn’t fans have an opportunity to buy Any tickets at face value? Why shouldn’t the team have a say on what their fans pay for THEIR tickets? Maybe some people actually want going to an event to be an enjoyable and affordable experience, not a mental and financial burden.
“you think you should be entitled to lower level mid field seats at face value, you are out of your mind”
I think a fan should be More entitled to face value tickets than a scalper, since they’re actually purchasing a ticket TO WATCH THE GAME, not turn a profit.
pay that much for a ticket if you had the chance to buy them on regular sale. If scalpers hadn’t bought up all the seats you would have been able to buy them at regular cost, dummy. I know you might not mind paying what you did, but wouldn’t it be nicer to pay LESS?? Stubhub could still operate profitably with a cap percentage on resale prices. This would allow actual fans to purchase tickets when they go onsale and still allow for others to get tickets to sold out events. But, I guess if you like it so much, you can continue to pay double for your tickets.
1. Get your facts straight — scalpers do not buy up all the tickets for events. It’s easy to see that for any given event, only about 5% of tickets are being resold. That means 95% of the tickets get into the hands of “real fans”.
2. Why does it matter what someone who buys a ticket, (or anything else), is going to do with it? A Tickle Me Elmo? A Playstation 3? A baseball card? An old restored Mustang? Where’s the law that says you have to purchase things for personal use only and not for an investment. Will a real estate broker tell someone they can’t buy a house because they’re not going to live in it?
3. The best seats are reserved for season ticket holders who pay thousands upon thousands of dollars 8 months before the football season starts. That’s why they have the right to them. If you want them, become a season ticket holder.
4. Why should the Patriots have any say where their ticket gets resold? IT’S NOT THEIR TICKET. If it was, they’d be liable for any injury you incur at the game. But they’re not. They are basically saying, “we’ll rent you the seat, but if anything happens it’s your own ass”. You can’t have it both ways — either they rent the seat at they’re risk, or you buy the seat at your own risk.
5. If you’re paying 5x face value for every event you go to, you’re choosing the wrong events. There’s plenty of stuff out there for less than face value, but as someone mentioned before, “real fans” don’t talk about that.
6. If you put a profit cap on ticket resale then you need to put a profit cap on everything else. Why can Walmart sell a t-shirt for 100% profit, but a ticket broker can’t? And if you limit profits, you’d better have a limit for losses as well — if you can’t make any more than 10%, someone needs to insure that you can’t lose any more than 10% either.
I don’t know where you get your 5% from. I live in NY and use stubhub to buy Yankees tickets. I live out of town and go in for weekend games, which are nearly impossible to buy on general sale. Right now on Stubhub alone, there are over 8,000 tickets available for games with a seating capacity 52,000 (15%). This is just 1 website at one time and does not include turnover. Red Sox have about 10% of all tickets currently listed. I looked at a few NFL teams capacity and tickets being sold at Stubhub and they are around 5% of all tickets currently listed. I’m sure more than that have already been sold. This is just one of many sites. I think your 5% is completely inaccurate.
The difference between reselling a house or merchandise and sold-out tickets is that there is an open competitive market for these items. You can’t go to walmart and buy every pair of pants and resell them for a profit, because the buyer will go to the next walmart. When tickets sell out there is no alternative to buy except for getting scalped.
The casual fan does not have the money to buy a season ticket or may not live in the town of their fav. team. The problem is that scalpers are buying all of the good tickets through a season ticket purchase and reselling all of them (often times directed straight to stubhub upon checkout). This make it even harder to sit in a good seat for a reasonable price.
You’re being ridiculous saying there needs to be a cap on loss (if a cap on profit) If you buy with the intend you sell, you should understand that you are taking that risk. If you actually did intend on going to the event and can’t make it, I’m sure that you would be happy to get some of your money back at least.
if/when the patriots stink and brokers start getting sales emails asking/begging/borrowing/stealing for them to buy patriots season tickets (and any other team for that matter). Brokers should save these emails and/or record conversations so that when the teams are good they can use it as evidence in court or wherever to show that all the teams really care about is DAAAAAA Benjamins
5% is an average. 10% seems logical for some events, and 15% is on the very high side. But, I would point out that at the 15% available for a particular Yankee game, that still leaves 85% in the hands of real fans. That’s a far cry from “scalpers” buying “all” the good seats.
In terms of housing or merchandise, are you saying when inventory is unlimited there should be no rules, but when inventory is less than demand, there needs to be a profit cap? If there are 5,000 houses in a given area and 10,000 people want to live there, is it suddenly wrong that the prices go up and someone might buy as an investment, when by the same token those 5,000 homes were worth half as much when only 2,500 people wanted to live there? The bottom line is that sometimes there’s not enough of something for everyone to have one and we are not all automatically entitled to it. That’s why an open market exists — so that if you aren’t lucky enough to get one, you have a shot at buying it from someone else.
As for the casual fan not having the money for a season ticket, I’d argue that I don’t have enough money for a Cadillac. I’d like one, but if I don’t have the money, why would I deserve it over someone that’s able to pay the price they’re asking?
Finally, it’s not ridiculous at all to suggest that if a cap is imposed, it needs to go in both directions. Why should someone be asked to take the risk associated with buying a ticket for resale when there’s a limit on the reward? Especially when sellers of comparable products and services are not subject to such limitations.
In the end, it’s a free market. For some events, there are 50,000 tickets and 100,000 people that want to go. Not everyone is going to get there. For other events, there are 50,000 tickets and only 30,000 people that want to go. In that case, (as it has been for many Yankee games this year), there are great deals on tickets below face value out there for real fans to take advantage of.
Supply and demand has been talked about here countless times. Let me explain again…
I’m a Steelers fan, one of several million. Let’s say there’s not a waiting list, and the Steelers put all their seats on sale this Saturday, for each game. Even though I’m a “real fan”, that does not give me the right to purchase tickets at face value. No, some luck will need involved, since I’m competing with millions of other fans.
Next, lets say the entire season is purchased by “real fans”, and everyone one of those folks actually attend the game. Now there is no second market, and even though I’m willing to spend more than face value, I wouldn’t be able to attend.
Thank goodness there’s a second market. I’d rather have the opportunity to let prices rise and fall, rather than be completely shut out.
hahahaha pooor baby
I sell watches and jewelry. We in the business get them for dirt cheap, and mark them way up. My dad has a corner store, gets inventory for peanuts, and jacks up the prices. My cousin sells furniture. He has the highest margin of all of us.
It’s really funny how ticket brokers get such a bad name, yet the rest of United States businessman just carry on about their business.
stubhub baseball games are a bad example too…stubhub has made it extremely easy to post baseball tickets for resale so more real fans are posting a few games here and there that they can’t make to. God forbid these season ticket holders get some money back. AND going with that, the more seats available for yankees games or whatever games mean the more competition mean cheaper prices. I guarantee you can find all sorts of Yankees tickets even for semi-good games at or below face value…Especially for tickets with higher face values
And the only legitimate difference is that the original price is on the ticket, while it’s not on a piece of jewelry, furniture, etc. If other retailers actually had to put the price they paid on the item along with the end selling price, everyone would be up in arms about how much they were paying there, too.
In fact, tickets are one of the few items that an end-user can actually buy from the original source at the original price. You can’t buy direct from Rolex . . .
People still wont’ be happy. They want the Saturday game against Boston to be cheap, too. It’s not fair if it’s twice face.
The funny thing is that you just made the best example out there for ticket brokers with this quote:
“You’re being ridiculous saying there needs to be a cap on loss (if a cap on profit) If you buy with the intend you sell, you should understand that you are taking that risk. If you actually did intend on going to the event and can’t make it, I’m sure that you would be happy to get some of your money back at least.”
Buying season tickets or concert tickets for that matter is a RISK. That is why brokers lose just as much money as they make sometimes. I guarantee you werent bitching about Patriots ticket prices before 2002. Do you know why? Because they were terrible. And the brokers who had season tickets before that time were losing alot of money. Then when the team became good everyone got into a huff about scalping and that the prices are too high.
Who is not to say that the Tom Brady breaks his leg again and the Patriots win 5-6 games for each of the next five years. If someone is willing to buy season tickets and gamble on the secondary value of those tickets who cares. Everyone complains the prices are too high and we are being gauged. You know what dont go. If you want to go then wait till a couple of days before the game when prices come down. I get into every event I have ever wanted to without paying alot because I have patience. I wait till there is someone out there looking to sell at face and that is when I buy. Or if available I check ticketmaster for additional tickets that are ALWAYS released the day or night before the game
And just like real estate there is in fact a competitive market for secondary tickets. It is called Stubhub, Ebay, Craigslist, Razorgator, Ticketexchange, Ticketsnow, Ticketnetwork just to name the big ones. You will find plenty of differences on prices between all of these to make an educated decision about your ticket purchase
Where I have a major problem with ticket brokers of any kind is when they advertise one price and then by the time you get to the checkout page you’ve accrued $100 extra worth of “service fees”. What are all these fees for? I understand marking up the price to make a profit, but there should be a cap on how much the brokers can mark up. Why can’t it be regulated so that the brokers who have the best customer service get the most customers? Some brokers say they have no hidden fees (i.e. JustGreatTickets), and while that’s true (they show all fees up front) there are still fees added on. I want to know why some brokers charge more fees than others and how that’s tolerated and why it’s so freaking hard to compare prices???
Just looked at a Yankees game that had a high number of resale tickets:
Wed, 8/26 Texas@NY
stubhub: 11,841 tickets listed
Tickets now: 4,583
Ticket liquidator: 1,172 sets of tickets; so maybe 2500 or more
Total: Around 19,000 tickets from these 3 websites currently listed.
That’s 36% of all seats being resold at this time. Like I said before that number doesn’t include all resale sites and also does not include tickets already resold or yet to be listed. I would guess many or even most of these sellers resell all or most of their tickets. With this being a low demand game the true numbers may be showing better due to slow sales. Barely any of these tickets were listed close to face value. I think there’s a problem.
The problem with your housing analogy is that when there is a demand for more homes, they will be built. When tickets sell out they can’t just print more.
I agree that if a fan doesn’t have the money they shouldn’t get season tickets. When scalpers buy so many season tickets they get all the good seats, making it impossible in some cases to get a reasonable price on a decent seat.
or almost 4X like I paid for Tampa, NY a few weeks ago. Yes, I did shop around. Yes, I did wait and wait, but when travel, hotel, etc. are being arranged you can only wait so long. So I grabbed those and I don’t think they went down after that. I guess I could have picked them up outside the stadium but I’m not going to travel that far not knowing I have a ticket.
If there is a cap on how much the mark up should be, should you be forced to pay at least a certain amount also? Coldplay is currently sold out at the Home Depot Center in California yet tickets that cost $115 after fees are selling for $70 or less. Do you propose to make it so everyone has to pay at least $115? Your best bet is to develop a personal relationship with a local broker and not depend on the big sites.
The thing is you would never have the opportunity to sit that seat at face value. The people who own the seats would never sell them if they didn’t make a profit. The broker is just the conduit between the people who want to sell and those that want to have that experience for one game rather than the crappy seat they could get from the team.
you are neglecting the fact that probably 95% of the tickets on Tnow are the same as the ones listed on Stubhub. Brokers list their tickets as many places as possible to get the best chance of selling them. I doubt there are more than 12,000 tickets on the secondary market.
“Why can’t it be regulated so that the brokers who have the best customer service get the most customers?”
You want the government to tell you who you can and cannot buy from? That’s like saying everyone has to shop at Walmart because their prices are lowest and you’re not allowed to try Target, Walgreens, CVS or Rite Aid? You can’t ask for a regulation eliminating competition!
Actually, lots of seats to a wide variety of events get sold for less than face value every day. If the market isn’t such that a profit is possible, season ticket holders are willing to sell at face or less in order to make back some of their investment. Just not for the Pats vs. Steelers on Monday night . . .
The other comment is correct that the tickets you see on Stubhub, TicketsNow, etc. are all the same — they are listed multiple times. So you can’t add them all up. Chances are, Stubhub, because of all the season ticket holders who go to games but sell a few that they cannot attend, will be the highest number. In that case, there are 23% available for that game. With that much inventory, what a great opportunity to see a game at the new Yankee Stadium for a fantastic price! They start in price at under $20!
I’m not sure why with the housing analogy it makes a difference that they can build more homes? Why should that determine whether or not something can be invested in? Plus, with tickets, they do make more. Entertainers add shows all the time because demand is high. The Yankees play 81 games at home every year — that’s a supply of over 4 million tickets! But you’re saying again that only if something is in short supply should there be limits to what it can be resold for? And I’ll say again that if you do it with tickets, you need to do it with baseball cards, works of art and Tickle Me Elmos.
You are incorrect that scalpers buy all the season tickets. The vast majority of season ticket holders buy them to attend games. And the general public has that same access to those season tickets — if they want to make the investment, they can.
Was 4x a $20 ticket for $80 or a $500 for $2000? Regardless, you were a willing buyer agreeing to the price of a willing seller. Whatever price you paid, it apparently was worth that amount to you to see the new Yankee Stadium in it’s first year. No one was forced to enter into the deal, so everyone’s happy, right?
Yeah I was thrilled to pay four times face, dummy. I understand the Scalper (sorry, i mean broker didn’t me to offend all of you sca-.. brokers) the broker didn’t make four times after stubhub wacks everyone’s pee-pee but they made a pretty good buck. I would have actually passed on the deal if my friend didn’t want me to go for his birthday. They were bleacher seats. Thank god I don’t have a family of 6 that wants to go.
Anything purchased with the intent to sell should be purchased with the understanding that there is chance of loss. That’s why you see clearance sales everywhere. If you want to profit, you should also be ready to lose.
People with a family of 6 that live in Tampa are thrilled — they can go to most any game they want for next to nothing. Maybe you should go to games there.
And in terms of the broker making a good buck, let’s say 3x face value, that’s not even as good as Walmart making 6x their cost on t-shirts. I guess they’re t-shirt scalpers . . .
The only reason anyone bitches about paying more than face value is because they see the face value. There is no other industry in which the end-user knows what the original cost of the product was. GM doesn’t tell you how much it cost them to make the car, Old Navy doesn’t tell you how much the jeans cost them, etc.
I will guarantee you that at the end of the day, ticket brokers actually make less percentage-wise than any clothing or mass retailer. Yet they get a lot more crap for it.
..is that the casual fan should have the right to the lowest prices as well. With the it being so easy for scalpers to earn a profit on stubhub and the like it has become impossible. I don’t live in Tampa, so that’s not an option.
There are almost 12000 on stubhub alone.
Not only does the casual fan have the right to the lowest prices, they have EXACTLY the same access to tickets as a broker does. The casual fan has the same opportunity to buy directly from the Yankees either with season tickets or during the single-game onsale.
Please illustrate how this is not true and prove your point that the casual fan is at a disadvantage.
That means there are good deals to be had for Joe Consumer!
I find myself on ticketmaster all the time at 10:00 on a Saturday morning hitting the refresh button over and over waiting for an event to go on sale. Many times when they actually do go on sale I’ll sit through my 15 minute wait and find out there are no tickets. Turn to stubhub, what do you know, thousands posted- so that’s where they all went! Only at a huge mark-up. It’s getting worse and worse as it gets easier and easier to scalp online.
Let’s say your event is in a place that holds 20,000 people. Ticketmaster is probably only offering 12,000 of those tickets for sale after holding stuff back for fan clubs, radio stations, family and friends of the artist, corporations, etc. Of those 12,000, if the average fan buys 4 tickets, that’s only 3000 actual transactions — doesn’t take long to eat up the available tickets for a sought-after show. And to be one of those 3000 transactions, you have the same shot as someone who’s going to resell what they get. It’s all luck of the draw.
Then, on Stubhub, you’ll see not only the small group of people that bought for the purpose of resale during that regular onsale, but the fan club members, corporations, and even tickets in some cases from the artist themselves, reselling tickets. At a huge markup? Sometimes. But sometimes not. It goes both ways and depends on the show.
And they didn’t ALL go to Stubhub — only an average of 5% went there. The other 95% went to REAL FANS. It’s just tough to be one of them when you have 40,000 people vying for 12,000 tickets.
Don’t know where you guys keep getting 5% from. I’ve posted some numbers earlier that show to be much higher, and in one case I accounted for over 30% of yankees tickets for a game. I’m sure I could find another few thousand if I expanded my search. While you might only typically see 5% on average listed at any given time that number is also skewed by turnover rate and late listings.
It’s also skewed by repetitive listings on multiple websites, speculative listings and more. 5-10% is a very fair and realistic range for the average.
It sure seems like a lot more than 5-10% of the people sitiing around me at events have had to buy tickets from online scalpers.
We have access to the data — it’s certainly around 5% and usually 10% at the most. As someone said earlier, baseball is skewed this year because lots of fans are selling a few of their tickets on Stubhub.
Keep in mind that even if you talked to 50 people around you it’s not even a tenth of one percent of the capacity of Yankee Stadium. So it might seem that more are buying from brokers, but that’s a very small sampling of entire venue.
Then pay attention to on-sale dates and quit whining, cupcake. Toads like you wait until a week before the event, then expect to walk up and get tickets for face value. Then you piss and moan because the event is sold out or all the best seats are taken. Get off your duff and get the tickets earlier. Quit your blubbering. This is America. Or at least it was last time I checked.
Check your facts. Look up the California Law on Scalping. They are called Ticket Brokers for a reason. They Re-Sell Tickets, need to be licensed and Bonded. Do you put up a 500,000 bond to whine?
I think not. Change your rosey colored glasses to black, that way you don’t have to see the real world!
Laws vary state to state and are never followed on the internet. Who said anything about California? I live in New York and they have laws that used to be enforced, but became unenforceable when internet resales became so huge. There needs to be federal mandate so everyone is playing on the same field. Laws need to be installed to protect the consumer from greedy scalpers. Brokers are scalpers, but if it makes you feel better about yourself then call it a broker. You need to take your green glasses off and realize that you’re killing an industry, performers reputations, and fans’ bank accounts.
It’s tougher to get tickets as soon as they go on sale for me than it is for scalpers. First, they get all of the presale passwords. Then the second tickets go on general sale they have who knows how many computers ran by who knows how many operators. It’s still debatable if some are using illegal software. There’s been plenty of times I got the TM shaft at 10 a.m on a Saturday. Don’t tell me when I’m trying to buy tickets. This IS America (or at least it was last time I checked), where consumers should be protected.
Another thing nobody mentions is I make a good amount of my ticket money on people’s apathy. You know, tickets available on ticketmaster or original seller site for MONTHS, I buy knowing it will sell out in advance, people drag there feet and then BANG! they go to check and its all gone. How about those individuals? Are they entitled to a ticket at face when they could have had them for weeks/months? LOL. Nobody is entitled to ANYTHING in this world except an opportunity which everyone has at 10am on a saturday on ticketmaster. If your unlucky in getting tickets, then thats the way it works, unlucky for you.
The bottom line is this country is built on capatalism. I can buy or sell WHATEVER I have or own for WHATEVER I want. Thats the way its always been and should always be. The ticket reseller is no different. As far as paying 6x for yankees bleachers to a random game, no disrespect but you must be a bleeping idiot. I just got my buddy in today for $125 apiece for $300+ apiece yankee tickets to today’s game. If he bought them from Yanks, would have paid $1,200….he paid around $500…a total savings of $600-700 total. Thats amazing and thats the way the yanks have been going all year for MOST games, people getting in for pennies on dollar because its OVER brokered.
Having an event bought up by brokers (tons of them) usually is BETTER for the consumer, not worse. Competition breeds lower prices. Its when something ISNT bought by many brokers (an thus more tickets in the hand of the “true fans” as you say) is when you pay TOP dollar. Need to understand the concept of supply and demand.
Like others have stated, the total number of tickets being resold is about 5% of the total amount of tickets for an event. The 12000 tickets that are posted on Stubhub for a Yankeez game is a very bad examle of the industry as a whole. The reason is that Stubhub has a deal with MLB and every team, except for the Red Sox. I have seen many times on Stubhub, they have alot of tickets for MLB teams that are not on other sites. This is like your example of the number of tickets posted on Stubub is 4-5x the number on TNOW, Etc.. The largest supplier of MLB tickets to Stubhub is…. The Teams themselves. Yes a portion of the difference is season ticket holders, but the majority is the teams. And just so you realize 99% of the tickets listed on Ticketnetwork, Razorgator and any other broker site are the same on Stubhub. You can’t add all the sites inventories together because it is all the same tickets, just the ticket owner posting it on all the available avenues for resale including Ebay.
Teams have now partnered to re-sell tickets on Stubhub. When I bought my season tickets, I listed all of my tickets on stubhub. I am sure most season ticket holders did the same. I belive a majority of sellers on stubhub are families with extra tickets to games. Most people in my section do use stubhub sell some games throughout the season.
Who can go to 81 home games? I am grateful that I can sell some of my 81 games. Before selling on stubhub, I was eating lots of tickets to have decent seats and playoff tickets.