BOSTON — The New England Patriots have won a bid to get the names of all the fans who bought or sold – or tried to buy or sell – tickets to home games through online ticket reseller StubHub Inc., a move one technology group sees as an invasion of privacy.
In a lawsuit against San Francisco-based StubHub, a subsidiary of eBay Inc., the Patriots said they could seek to revoke season tickets of people who use StubHub, claiming the website encourages fans to break state law and violate team policies.
A lawyer for the Patriots wouldn’t say what the team plans to do with the 13,000 names, which StubHub gave it last week after losing its appeal of a Massachusetts state court ruling.
Team rules bar reselling game tickets for a profit. State law, though rarely enforced, restricts ticket markups to $2 above face value plus some service charges.
Patriots tickets have been offered on StubHub at prices many times higher, including two 50-yard line seats for New England’s Dec. 16 game against the New York Jets listed Thursday for $1,300.05 each. Their face value is $125 each.
The Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group, said the court order to turn over the names infringes on the privacy rights of Patriots fans.
“The Patriots, just at the beginning of the season, were filming opposing teams and accused of surveillance and given a slap from the NFL about that. Now they’re turning the cameras on their fans, so clearly there is a lack of understanding about what privacy is,” said center deputy director Ari Schwartz.
