In a "victory for bargain-conscious sports fans," the NFL has "agreed not to set minimum prices on its ticket-resale website," according to Hannah Karp of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman yesterday said that there is a "multistate settlement with the NFL that prohibits the league from mandating price floors on its official Ticket Exchange resale site, where it had been preventing sellers from listing tickets for less than face value." Karp notes the terms of the settlement also "bar the league from directing teams to use practices designed to make it hard for fans to buy tickets on competitor resale sites," such as StubHub and Vivid Seats. The NFL will "pay more than $100,000 to cover the investigation costs incurred by attorneys general" in New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio and DC. NFL VP/Communications Brian McCarthy said the settlement “contains no findings of wrongdoing by the league or its member clubs and does not require the NFL to change any of its current ticketing practices." The NFL's settlement "won’t prevent individual teams from making their own ticketing rules." Schneiderman said that he encouraged "every NFL team -- and every team in professional sports -- to heed the call of all sports fans and remove price floors from every team-authorized secondary ticket market.” The outcome "bodes well for resale sites such as StubHub" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 11/16). In N.Y., Ken Belson notes the NFL will now "let each team decide whether it wants to set minimum prices for tickets resold on online ticket exchanges." The league said it would stop “formally or informally coordinating or encouraging pricing practices among its member clubs” that would result in minimum prices of tickets for resale (N.Y. TIMES, 11/16).
RIGHT RESULT? In Buffalo, Tom Precious notes the NFL "halted the floor pricing mandate" in '16 while the multi-state investigation was underway. The settlement "does not preclude price floor policies for tickets to events primarily distributed by the NFL, such as the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl" (BUFFALO NEWS, 11/16). PRO FOOTBALL TALK's Mike Florio writes this is the "right result," as people who buy tickets to games "should be able to sell them at a loss -- especially if no one else wants to buy the tickets at face value" (PROFOOTBALLTALK.com, 11/16).
