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Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup \u2014 and beyond.<\/p>\n

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress<\/a> on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don\u2019t actually have.<\/p>\n

The letter \u2014 addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer \u2014 includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery one of these stories erodes the public\u2019s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,\u201d NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. \u201cWe urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day \u2014 months later \u2014 that the seller couldn\u2019t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn\u2019t access them as fans marched in on gameday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,\u201d Parker and Cohen wrote.<\/p>\n

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users\u2019 difficulty in accessing their tickets.<\/p>\n

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,\u201d Sterne said in a statement. \u201cMany of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer\u2019s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization \u201ccan guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms\u201d and that FIFA.com\/tickets<\/a> \u201cis the official ticket sales channel\u201d for the tournament.<\/p>\n

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.<\/p>\n

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance<\/a> in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement<\/a>, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,\u201d Hanaway said in her statement. \u201cMissourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup \u2014 and beyond. The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}