{"id":1051,"date":"2024-05-29T21:01:18","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T21:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/stubhub-must-pay-16m-after-verdict-in-lawsuit-from-ticketing-startup\/"},"modified":"2024-06-02T17:30:19","modified_gmt":"2024-06-02T17:30:19","slug":"stubhub-must-pay-16m-after-verdict-in-lawsuit-from-ticketing-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/stubhub-must-pay-16m-after-verdict-in-lawsuit-from-ticketing-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"StubHub Must Pay $16M After Verdict in Lawsuit From Ticketing Startup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tStubHub must pay more than $16 million in legal damages after a jury decided that the ticketing giant intentionally torpedoed a smaller company\u2019s lucrative concierge partnership with American Express.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing a month-long trial, a Los Angeles jury on Friday (May 24) sided with Spotlight Ticket Management \u2014 a tech startup that had sued over allegations that StubHub failed to pay Spotlight millions in commissions and then used false statements to \u201cpoison\u201d the company\u2019s relationship with Amex.<\/p>\n

\n\tLeading up to the trial, StubHub had argued it paid Spotlight everything that was owed and that the smaller firm had killed its Amex deal itself by being an \u201cunreasonable partner\u201d to the financial giant: \u201cThe true cause of Spotlight\u2019s demise was Spotlight itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in Friday\u2019s verdict, the jurors found for Spotlight on both issues. They ordered StubHub to pay $3 million over the commissions; $5.3 million over money lost from the terminated Amex partnership; and another $8.1 million that they said Spotlight would have earned from Amex in the future.<\/p>\n

\n\tStubHub did not immediately return a request for comment. Amex was not named as a defendant in the case or accused of any wrongdoing. In a statement, Spotlight called the verdict \u201ca victory for Spotlight, for affiliate partners more broadly, and for ticket purchasers across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLaunched in 2007, Spotlight offers ticketing management software to help companies provide event access to their employees or customers. One of its major clients was Amex, which used Spotlight as part of its concierge system to buy concert and sports tickets for premium cardholders.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn its lawsuit, Spotlight claimed that it had successfully partnered with StubHub for years, sending as much as $85 million in ticket sales to the company\u2019s platform and receiving a 7% commission on those sales.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut starting in 2016, Spotlight claimed that StubHub began underpaying those commissions. And when the smaller company raised the dispute, it claimed that StubHub retaliated by tanking its relationship with Amex with false and disparaging claims.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStubHub gave Amex an \u2018ultimatum\u2019 that it could not work with Spotlight for these reasons and Amex would lose access to StubHub\u2019s entire ticket inventory, crushing the availability of secondary market tickets to the Amex Concierge program overnight, unless Amex got rid of Spotlight,\u201d the company\u2019s attorneys wrote in a pre-trial briefing.<\/p>\n

\n\tStubHub sharply disagreed. In its own filings, the company argued that it had paid Spotlight all the commissions that it was actually owed under its affiliate program. And it said that the smaller company had \u201cdestroyed its own relationship with Amex\u201d through \u201cerratic behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSpotlight has taken a modest dispute about payment of affiliate commissions and morphed it into a conspiratorial web to support its claim for hundreds of millions of dollars,\u201d StubHub\u2019s attorneys wrote. \u201cAmex witnesses have testified that they decided not to renew based on Spotlight\u2019s unreasonable demands and that StubHub had nothing to do with Amex\u2019s decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut following a three-week trial, jurors believed Spotlight\u2019s version of events, finding StubHub liable for breach of contract over the unpaid commissions as well as intentional interference with contract and intentional interference with prospective economic relations over the Amex partnership.<\/p>\n

\n\tStubHub can appeal the verdict, first by asking the judge to order a new trial and then by taking the case to a California appeals court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

StubHub must pay more than $16 million in legal damages after a jury decided that the ticketing giant intentionally torpedoed a smaller company\u2019s lucrative concierge partnership with American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1456,303,510,1293,1459,1483,395],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-16m","tag-lawsuit","tag-pay","tag-startup","tag-stubhub","tag-ticketing","tag-verdict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1139,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/1139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}