After weeks of complaints from frustrated fans, StubHub is being sued by customers who say the ticket reseller’s inability to fulfill orders crushed their dreams of going to the World Cup.
Julia Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria, both of California, sued the ticketing giant this week in federal court in New York, alleging that “false and misleading” sales practices left them without the tickets they purchased for group stage matches last month.
The lawsuit, which seeks to become a class action, says Moghal and Renteria are among hundreds or even thousands of World Cup fans who purchased tickets only to find out that they “did not exist, were revoked without any forewarning, or had been erased” because of what the tournament’s organizer, FIFA, deemed “poor digital infrastructure.”
In addition to monetary damages, Moghal and Renteria are asking that StubHub be barred from selling World Cup tickets and that any profits from those sales be given to affected customers.
StubHub declined to comment on the lawsuit but said in a statement that its “singular goal is to get fans into events.”
If anything goes wrong, “our FanProtect Guarantee provides replacement tickets or a full refund,” the company said. “The World Cup is no different, and the issues fans have experienced are largely driven by problems with the event organizer’s own ticketing infrastructure.”
FIFA encourages fans to buy tickets through its own marketplace, where it adds a 30% surcharge to every resold ticket — 15% each from the buyer and seller.
In a statement, the organization said it “has no visibility over, or control of, secondary market ticket transactions carried out on third-party platforms” and “rejects any suggestion that the functional issues being experienced by users of third-party platforms” are the result of FIFA’s ticketing infrastructure.
For weeks, fans have been complaining on social media about tickets that never arrived from resellers, orders that were canceled at the last minute, and hours they spent trying to sort out problems between FIFA’s ticketing system and outside resale platforms.
According to the lawsuit, Moghal paid $1,905 for three tickets to the June 18 Switzerland-Bosnia and Herzegovina match at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, but never received them and never got a refund, which would violate the company’s guarantee.
As the match approached, Moghal was given conflicting information about the status of her order, first receiving a notice that the tickets were ready, then learning that StubHub had canceled her order, then being misled into thinking her tickets would be delivered after all, the lawsuit said.
After the initial cancellation, Moghal spent hours on the phone with StubHub, which said the order would remain canceled but then reversed course and promised her that they would be delivered an hour before the match, the lawsuit said.
Moghal drove to the stadium and waited in line, but never received her tickets, the lawsuit said. She was then promised a refund but never got one, the lawsuit said.
Had she known “that StubHub was either unable to deliver or not authorized to deliver her World Cup Tickets to her, she never would have purchased them,” the lawsuit said.
Similarly, Renteria paid $2,294 for two tickets to the June 18 Mexico-South Korea match in Guadalajara, Mexico, but never received his tickets, the lawsuit said.
Like Moghal, Renteria received a notice that his tickets were ready, only to find that StubHub canceled the order, the lawsuit said. He was only refunded after “significant complaints to StubHub,” but had to eat the cost of traveling to Mexico, the lawsuit said.
—Michael R. Sisak, Associated Press
Associated Press reporter R.J. Rico in Atlanta contributed to this report.