You can’t be bad and have ticket controversies.
The Cardinals are good. They have been good. They will continue to be good. And people will pay a premium for good seats on good days to watch good teams.
The Lewis & Clark Baseball League knew (knows) this. And if you believe the allegations that the Cardinals have made, then they took it to the next logical place… and made some COLD HARD CASH.
According to the STL Post-Dispatch, the LCBL was allotted 3,500 tickets in 2014 at a discounted price through the Cardinals Care program:
The tickets were supposed to be used for fundraising efforts to support youth participation in amateur baseball, according to the suit. Cardinals Care asks that they either be used by friends, family and supporters of the organization, or be sold at up to face value as part of fundraising for the organization.
Instead, the suit contends, the charity began selling the tickets for above face value on StubHub, an online ticket exchange. The suit notes that many of the tickets were for high-demand games, including a May 26 matchup against the New York Yankees during what was shortstop Derek Jeter’s final season.
Yeah, Jeets.
Turns out that the charity (allegedly) sold 1,723 tickets on the secondary market for $122,270 or about $40,475 over what they would have got by selling the tix at face value.
The Cardinals want that $40,475 back. Plus damages and court fees.
On one hand, the Cardinals have a point. They’re they ones taking a hit on this block of tickets. And they pretty explicitly tell charities that they can “either be used by friends, family and supporters of the organization, or be sold at up to face value as part of fundraising for the organization”.
In other words, you do the legwork selling these tickets, you can keep 1/2 (or whatever the discounted rate is).
On the other hand, MLB has an official agreement with StubHub to sell their tickets on the secondary market. So it’s not like this charity was doing something that the Cardinals themselves weren’t. Further, the lawsuit doesn’t claim that the LCBL was using StubHub for anything other than maximizing their cash intake, presumably to have more money to do good things with.
I’m no lawyer.
But if I were on a jury, I think this one would be filed under ‘you live and you learn’ for the Cardinals. Unless these charities sign an explicit agreement that they’ll return all monies made from sales above face value, it’s a fool’s errand to go after this particular loophole finder. Again, it’s not like MLB or the Cardinals have anything against StubHub.
Weeds find cracks. People are creative. Sometimes they do things you can’t imagine prior to them being done.
Celebrate their ingenuity. Ban them from getting the tickets again, if you want. But don’t get pissy-pants after the fact.
Photo: David Mikush
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