BlogLine

Another Super Bowl in New Jersey? Unlikely!

12/19/17

By: Joshua G. Ferguson
A Third Circuit panel issued an opinion last week in an NFL fan’s class action alleging the National Football League violated New Jersey’s consumer fraud law by failing to make enough 2014 Super Bowl tickets available for sale, finding that the economic factors presented created a plausible theory that the league’s conduct inflated prices.
The three-judge panel reversed the district court’s decision to dismiss the claim brought by Josh Finkelman alleging that the NFL’s lottery ticket policy for the Super Bowl distributed a fraction of the tickets to the public. Plaintiff relied on a statute which requires the sale of 95 percent of all tickets of any event held in New Jersey.  In their amended complaint Plaintiff cited the opinion of sports economist Dr. Daniel Rascher’s that Finkelman paid more on the secondary market for his tickets to Super Bowl XLVIII than he would have had the NFL not withheld more than 5 percent of tickets from sale to the public, and in doing so violated the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.
In rendering the decision, The Third Circuit deferred the action to the Supreme Court of New Jersey to certify the meaning of the New Jersey ticket law statute and determine if the NFL’s violation falls within that statute.
For further information or for further inquiries involving hospitality law, you may contact Joshua Ferguson of Freeman Mathis & Gary, LLP, at jferguson@fmglaw.com.