The Warriors last night responded to a lawsuit StubHub filed against the team and Ticketmaster over the weekend, issuing a statement that claims the team is concerned about the "presence of counterfeit tickets," according to Bob Egelko of the S.F. CHRONICLE. The statement said, "Dozens of fans are denied entry to Oracle Arena each game because they purchased counterfeit tickets. Warriors.com and NBATickets.com are the only sites where tickets are guaranteed to be authentic. Although some third party sites may offer a 'money back’ guarantee, none of them can verify ticket authenticity that would guarantee entry to our games." Egelko notes the Warriors "have sold out 118 straight games" at the 19,596-seat Oracle Arena. About three-fourths of the seats, 14,500, are "reserved for season-ticket holders, the primary target of the resale restrictions." The lawsuit focused on Ticketmaster's arrangement with the team to "limit resales of tickets by fans who couldn’t attend a game, or by brokers who had obtained the tickets," starting with an August '12 agreement between the team and company to "share resale fees." The suit said that in recent months, the Warriors "have started telling season-ticket buyers that they would lose their rights to future season tickets, and to playoff tickets, if they resold individual-game tickets through any exchange other than Ticketmaster," and the team has "added that language to its season-ticket contracts and is enforcing it by monitoring resales" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 3/31). The Warriors said that the suit's allegations of their restricting ticket re-sales is "not true." A team official yesterday said, "That has not happened at all." The team added that the focus "is on tickets brokers, not individual season ticket holders." In S.F., Scott Ostler writes, "But once I buy something, shouldn’t I be able to do with it what I want?" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 3/31).
