Patriots draw a line

The New England Patriots have filed suit against StubHub, saying the company encourages people to break the state anti-scalping law and the team's rule against reselling tickets for a profit. They have also filed suit against over 50 season ticket holders who they claim sold their tickets on StubHub.

The Patriots are drawing a line in the sand against resellers and the websites that support it. This is contrarian to the onslaught of states that have softened the ticket reselling laws over the last few years.

StubHub in initially released a statement saying

"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.Every individual is subject to our user agreement which obligates them to abide by their local and state regulations with respect to ticket resale,"

Since then, it has filed a countersuit saying the Patriots have violated the Massachusetts antiscalping law and is trying to create a monopoly.

As part of the legal wrangling, The Patriots won a case to have Stubhub turn over a list of 13,000 names of buyers, sellers and bidders of Patriots tickets. What the Patriots are planning on doing with this data is yet to be known.

While the Patriots and Stubhub are fighting each other in court, the politicians are trying to rewrite the laws in Massachusetts.

This essentially comes down to Patriots vs. eBay, since eBay bought StubHub last year. While ticket reselling still has a shadowy appeal to most, when presented in terms of a free market, most people are sold on it quickly.

Developing…

http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2006/11/23/patriots_sue_ticket_reseller_in_effort_to_fight_scalping/

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/12/21/stubhub_hits_back_at_pats_in_battle_over_ticket_resales/

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/10/19/patriots-may-cancel-tickets-for-using-stubhub

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