Super Bowl Ticket Scandal: Fans Who Paid Thousands For Tickets Having Them Canceled At The Last Minute

Diehard fans who dished out thousands for Super Bowl tickets are finding themselves out of luck as online ticket sellers are cancelling at the last minute to take advantage of near record-breaking prices.

Tickets to Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIX are skyrocketing, quickly approaching the most expensive in history and running a minimum of $10,000. But even some fans willing and able to pay the high prices are left out, with ticket brokers like StubHub and eBay allowing sellers to break their contracts and cancel the tickets.

Brandon Kuhn, a Seattle Seahawks fan living in Abbotsford, British Columbia, found this out the hard way. Kuhn told the CBC that he bought a ticket on Saturday, January 17, before the Seahawks had even beaten the Green Bay Packers to advance to the big game.

He paid $1,600 for tickets, but two days later got an email that the seller had pulled out.

“They saw an opportunity to make much more money and they screwed a lot of people in the process,” Kuhn told the CBC.

StubHub has a guarantee for ticket buyers, but in Kuhn’s case, the company could not get him tickets to the Super Bowl. Instead, they offered him a $1,000 credit toward future purchases.

StubHub spokesperson Alison Salcedo said the original seller had mis-listed, adding that Kuhn appeared to be selling the tickets himself.

“Our records show that exactly one day later, Mr. Kuhn re-posted the same tickets for sale at nearly double the price he paid,” she added. “In most any other case involving a mis-listing, we’d work to accommodate the buyer, but not in a situation where he is attempting to take advantage of our marketplace.”

Kuhn said he was trying to sell those tickets so he could have money for cheaper ones and the cost of traveling to Arizona.

Kuhn is not the only one caught up in the Super Bowl ticket scandal. Many other sellers on the secondary market pulled out of earlier sales when they found they could make two or three times that amount.

One Reddit user posted a story about dishing out close to $4,000 for tickets only to have the buyer cancel.

“I bought my tickets less than an hour after the NFCCG. Two nosebleed seats for 1700 each, plus another 300 for service fees. I got a call today that the tickets weren’t guaranteed, and I might show up to the game without the seat I’d paid for. They offered me a 200% refund and I negotiated an additional 1k to cover hotel+other non-refundable costs – it took them about 5 minutes to ‘think on it’ and call me back, so I probably could’ve gotten a lot more – but I would gladly give it all back to be able to watch the game. Instead I’m scrambling to find a Super Bowl party I can crash.

“I’m still kind of dazed but I know I’m mad and I’m pretty crushed that this is happening 2 days before the event. My coworkers were excited for me because they know how big a fan I am. My family, my in-laws, and my friends were all hoping for some great stories and pictures. And now I’m sitting here empty-handed. I feel like a f***ing idiot, frankly, and I shouldn’t.”

But the situation could run much deeper than greedy ticket holders. As Daily Beast writer Jesse Lawrence pointed out, less than 2 percent of tickets end up being available to the average fan. The rest is split up between teams playing in the game, the host team, and then distributed equally to every other team in the league.

Lawrence suggested the skyrocketing prices are a sign that the market is being manipulated by those controlling the market.

“The cheapest face value ticket for this year’s Super Bowl was $1,200, which is $8,000 less than what you can get now on the secondary market. With nothing particularly different about the match-up, the participants or the location, those kinds of numbers suggest that the market is rigged.

“The market is being manipulated to the extreme by those who have paid teams and the league for access.”

Some fans are trying to fight back. Last year, fan Josh Finkelman sued the NFL, claiming that it was nearly impossible to get Super Bowl tickets. The tiny percentage of tickets available for purchase at face value are determined by a lottery that’s held months before the season even starts.

But for fans caught up in the 2015 Super Bowl ticket scandal, there is little recourse. Online brokers like eBay and StubHub have allowed the canceled tickets to hold, even the ones that violate seller-buyer contracts. Kuhn, who said he would have taken any ticket in the stadium, even in the nosebleed section, is now stuck watching the game at home.

[Image via Fox Sports]