The age of widespread legalized ticket reselling has not unfolded without a few potholes. Or lawsuits.
Via Jonathan M. Alexander of the Houston Chronicle, a group of 19 ticket brokers has sued the Texans over changes to the team’s season-ticket policies.
The brokers have owned personal seat licenses with the Texans since the founding of the team. They claim that, after the 2023 season, the Texans raised the prices on season tickets issued to the brokers and restricted the number of tickets they could purchase.
The Texans apparently are hoping to enhance their home-field advantage. As noted by Alexander, last year’s Sunday night home game featured thousands of Lions fans, roughly one third of the crowd. At one point, chanting from the Lions fans forced the Texans to commit a false start.
“This outrageous and unacceptable behavior doesn’t just harm the Plaintiffs — it harms hundreds of thousands of Texans’ fans, and every sports fan in Texas who wants to attend an NFL game at NRG Stadium,’’ attorney Josh Bowlin, who represents the plaintiffs, said in a press release.
“We were recently made aware of a lawsuit filed by certain ticket resellers,” the Texans said in a statement. “We believe these allegations are meritless and look forward to addressing them appropriately.”
The case comes in the aftermath of the Packers terminating season-ticket rights for those who have sold all of their tickets for multiple years.
The difference in this situation is the existence of a PSL. The PSL agreement possibly has specific terms and conditions that would arguably prevent the Texans from treating one set of PSL holders differently than others, or some arbitrarily changing the rules regarding the purchase and resale of tickets.
Especially if the brokers purchased their PSLs in 2002, long before the modern reselling market emerged.
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