BOSTON (AP) – In a move to fight scalping, the New England Patriots have sued ticket reseller StubHub Inc., claiming the company encourages fans to break the state’s anti-scalping law and violate the team’s ban on reselling Patriots ticket for a profit.

The suit, filed Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court, also names two people who allegedly resold their season tickets on StubHub after they were revoked by the team, and 50 unnamed season ticket holders whom the team said illegally resold their tickets on StubHub, The Boston Globe reported.

The Patriots are seeking three times the revenue brought in by StubHub and the other defendants, plus an injunction against further re-sales of Patriots tickets on the StubHub Web site.

StubHub told the Globe in a statement that it could not comment on the suit, since it had not received it as of Wednesday night. But the company said it’s entered partnerships with other NFL teams and said it has sufficient protections to prevent fraud and abuse.

“StubHub is a champion for the rights of fans to be able to gain access to tickets for events they want to see and a platform to sell the tickets they cannot use,” the statement said. “Every individual is subject to our user agreement which obligates them to abide by their local and state regulations with respect to ticket resale.”

Ticket re-sales have boomed in recent years as the Internet has allowed sellers to easily reach a broad audience.

StubHub, eBay and Craigslist are among the largest Web sites reselling millions of tickets worth billions of dollars.

States such as Florida and New York have recently scrapped or relaxed anti-scalping laws, but scalping is still illegal in Massachusetts – though the law is rarely enforced.

The law limits ticket reselling businesses to markups of $2 above face value, plus various service charges. On the StubHub site Wednesday night, tickets to the Patriots weekend game with the Chicago Bears with a face value of $125 were being offered for $754. Sideline seats with a face value of $59 were for sale at $205

State Rep. Michael Morrissey, D-Quincy, said the current law is “obviously not working.”

“I applaud the actions of the Patriots, but the question is, how does that stop the guy on the corner from reselling the ticket?” he said. “They’d never know about it if the person didn’t list the ticket on StubHub.”

The Patriots attorney Daniel Goldberg acknowledged there are many ways to resell tickets. But he said StubHub is a particularly troublesome offender that encourages ticket holders to resell, often at inflated prices and without warning buyers that the tickets they purchase may not be honored by the club.

For instance, revoked season tickets have been sold on StubHub with no warning to the buyer that the tickets might not be valid at Gillette Stadium.

“Our experience is that as the listings on StubHub have increased, so also have the number of people who show up at the stadium with invalid tickets,” Goldberg said.


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