Yankees Suing StubHub Over Store Too Close To Close To Stadium

The Yankees are suing ticket reseller StubHub over a new store opening too close to Yankee Stadium. The team claims the store would be breaking a New York law that bans the resale of tickets that close to a stadium.

The Yankees suing StubHub comes a few days before the online company was set to open their store in front of Yankee Stadium so fans could pick up their tickets. The New York state law the Yankees claim would be broken bans the resale of tickets within 1,500 feet of a stadium.

While the matter waits to go to court, StubHub has been issued a restraining order by a State Supreme Court judge barring the opening of the store.

The Yankees lawsuit claims StubHub is “setting up their own resale business and that would affect our direct sales” and then clarifies, “we’re talking about across the street from Yankee Stadium.”

StubHub argues that “our view is that we’re going to continue to offer fans to buy and sell tickets where they want to and not where the Yankees want them to.”

Last month the Yankees opted out of a league wide resale arrangement with StubHub. The only other team to opt-out was the Angels.

The Yankees opted out because they believe StubHub undercuts them by selling tickets at a lower price than the team does. StubHub is able to do this because those tickets have already been sold once by the Yankees and are now being sold online by a third party.

StubHub claims the Yankees suing them is the result of “a pattern here of the Yankees trampling on the rights of their fans and they are using heavy handed tactics to do that.” The country’s largest ticket reseller believes fans should be able to pick up their tickets wherever is most convenient.

It will be interesting to see how this case turns out. The outcome should be based on what exactly the function of StubHub store was going to be. If it was just a ticket distribution station with no chance for fans to buy tickets directly, then they were doing nothing wrong. If fans were going to be able to walk in and buy tickets there, things could get very complicated.

Do you think the Yankees should be suing StubHub over the ticket reseller’s new store?

[image via flickr]