Federal Judge Dismisses StubHub's Anti-Trust Lawsuit

SAN FRANCISCO (CelebrityAccess) — A court has thrown out a lawsuit brought by secondary ticketing marketplace StubHub against Ticketmaster and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors over ticket resales of season tickets.

StubHub had brought the suit after The Warriors had threatened to cancel the subscriptions of season ticket holders if they attempted to resell their tickets via StubHub instead of Ticketmaster’s own secondary ticket exchange marketplace.

StubHub's lawsuit alleged that requiring customers to utilize Ticketmaster's service constituted an illegal relationship and was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Ticketmaster disagreed, noting that there was nothing illegal about maintaining an exclusive vendor relationship. As well, the judge determined that tickets sold on the primary and secondary market were essentially the same commodity and that the anti-trust violations that StubHub was pursuing were not substantiated.

"In particular, a 'primary' ticket to a Warriors game and a 'secondary' ticket to a Warriors game are 'commodities reasonably interchangeable by consumers for the same purposes,'," Judge Maxine Chesney said in her ruling. – Staff Writers