LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Ticketmaster has started fighting back against secondary ticket seller StubHub and its corporate overlord eBay by filing suit today in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Billboard is reporting that the suit is focused on the sale of Lynyrd Skynyrd/Hank Williams Jr. "Rowdy Frynds" tour to which StubHub has been offering "premium" tickets to. The suit alleges that these tickets violate Ticketmasters' exclusivity clauses in their contracts with venues. These primary-market tickets put StubHub in Ticketmaster's sights which has contracts with numerous venues that allow it to be the exclusive seller of all "sellable capacity" tickets.
StubHub typically takes a 15% fee from the final auction price of tickets sold on their site.
"It is clear to us that StubHub knowingly and intentionally interfered with our contracts and is selling tickets to the general public in violation of our contracts, and it had to be addressed," Sean Moriarty, president and CEO of Ticketmaster, tells Billboard.biz.
"The issue in this case is these tickets posted on StubHub for a tour were tickets that were made available to the general public, and in these particular instances, we had the exclusive right with our clients, It's very obvious to us that they're selling seats in the venue directly to the general public, it doesn't get any more complicated than that."
StubHub isn't the only target of Ticketmaster's litigious streak — 4 other firms have been slapped with suits. The lawsuits allege that these firms operate automated systems that mine Ticketmaster's website for tickets that are then resold on the secondary ticket market for increased prices. Ticketmaster claimed that one individual IP address had access their system over 3 million times as an alleged bot hunted for tickets.
