Ticketmaster US has launched legal action against the ticket auction site StubHub, which was acquired by eBay back in January.
Ticketmaster claim that the web firm have "interfered" with some of its contractual rights by offering "official premium tickets" to concerts at venues where they have exclusivity for primary ticket sales - in particular on the current Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hank Williams tour. Reports suggest the lawsuit also alleges that StubHub has secured some of those "official" tickets by threatening venues that if they don't bulk sell tickets to them they won't book the venue for any tours they are involved in in the future.
Commenting on the lawsuit, Ticketmaster chief Sean Moriarty told Billboard: "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. When folks demonstrate the willingness to violate your contractual rights, sometimes you're left with no choice, and this is one of those times. The industry is in a time of great change, we care very much about doing the right things by consumers, by our clients and by the industry, and certainly by our business, and we won't stand by and have contractual rights we bargained for fairly and squarely and have paid dearly for, and have those rights trampled on merely because StubHub would like to operate without having to respect those rights. And we're certainly not afraid because it's eBay that now owns them".
The StubHub lawsuit is one of a series of litigation Ticketmaster has launched this week against online ticket agents. In the earlier lawsuits, the ticketing giant sued RMG Technologies, Act Ticket Service and consortiums of individual ticket sellers in Texas and Massachussetts over allegations they used special software, or 'bots', that automatically searches ticketing sites like those run by Ticketmaster, and then buys and resells tickets via those companies' own sites.
Ticketmaster say that the fact the lawsuits against the 'bot' users and StubHub have been filed in the same week is coincidence, but the litigation is another sign of all that growing concern in the ticketing and live music sector in the growth of online ticket touting operations who are taking touting, and the resale of tickets at considerable profit, to a whole new level.