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“Suspicious. Too many things here don’t add up.”
That’s how Mark Gallagher of West Vancouver feels about ticket resale company StubHub.
He paid $11,380 Cdn months ago for a pair of premium seats to watch Canada play Qatar in a World Cup match in Vancouver last Thursday. They were to be a Christmas gift for family members.
But StubHub never delivered the tickets, despite repeated calls to customer service in the weeks, days and hours before game time.
Gallagher is just one of thousands of furious fans across North America caught in what ticket industry insiders are calling a major breakdown and black eye on World Cup events.
Mark Gallagher tells CBC News about the frustration of being assured his World Cup tickets would land — only to arrive at B.C. Place in Vancouver empty-handed.
“The night before game day, we were panicking. You can imagine how stressful the situation was. We stayed up till 4 a.m. with somebody on the line trying to get this problem solved,” Gallagher told CBC News.
“They said, ‘Everything’s fine. Your tickets are 100 per cent guaranteed. We will get back to you in two to three hours.’ That never happened.”
StubHub cancelled his order while he was stuck outside the stadium. There was no explanation, no replacement and no refund, he said.
‘Speculative ticketing’ blamed
StubHub said in an email that it will look into Gallagher’s case in Vancouver and will honour its refund guarantees to fans. The company also reissued a statement first provided to CBC News last week that blamed FIFA’s ticketing technology for the problems. But it refused to elaborate.
FIFA, which is staging the 2026 World Cup and is soccer’s governing body, referred all questions back to StubHub.
“We’re witnessing, on a massive scale, one of the biggest collapses in the history of ticketing,” said Scott Friedman, a 20-year ticketing industry executive in Cleveland and host of the Ticket Talk Network podcast.
Friedman put out a call to his followers this week and said he has already gathered more than 400 complaints from StubHub customers who claim they, too, were sold tickets that never arrived and are stuck pleading for refunds.
“StubHub is famous for this — not just for the FIFA World Cup but for other events all over the globe. It’s that they allow speculative ticketing,” he said. “So speculative ticketers are basically sellers selling tickets they don’t have.”
The practice, banned in a handful of U.S. states, has been blamed for similar mass cancellation ticket fiascos involving high-profile tours by Oasis and Olivia Rodrigo.
World Cup focuses attention on resellers
What’s different this time, say some observers, is that the World Cup — which is being played in 16 cities across Canada, the United States and Mexico — is focusing public attention on the failures of resellers such as StubHub like never before.
“I’m seeing hundreds of complaints a day on social media,” said Randy Nichols, a band manager based in New York City who sits on the board and conducts ticket research for National Independent Talent Organization, a non-profit trade association in the U.S.
“That leads me to guess how many people are being harmed who aren’t on social media talking about this. We’re at a minimum of hundreds a day. It’s not out of the question. It’s thousands a day.”
Ticketing researcher Randy Nichols says ‘speculative ticketing’ may be impacting thousands of fans every single day. He calls for much stronger oversight of resale marketplaces.
Nichols is calling for changes and greater transparency in the resale ticketing industry.
“We need to ban speculative ticketing, for one. Selling something that you don’t have should absolutely be illegal. These marketplaces that are selling them like StubHub should be regulated in many ways,” he said.
“They should let you know who you’re buying from, and there should be a seller rating. Just like on eBay, Amazon, Uber, Lyft. Every other marketplace in the world.”
Both Canada’s Competition Bureau and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission declined to comment on whether they are investigating.
However, the Competition Bureau issued a statement saying it has taken action against ticketing companies in the past and that “we strongly encourage anyone who suspects that a company or individual is engaged in anti-competitive conduct to report it via our online complaint form.”
Mark Gallagher of Vancouver said he feels deceived and wants far more than a refund from StubHub.
“They just kept kicking us down the road and promising us things that were never delivered once. And this is not one conversation…. This is multiple conversations, multiple chat lines. I probably spent 15 to 20 hours on this alone a week before the match, trying to get the tickets.”
Gallagher is vowing to hound StubHub to ensure he gets his $11,000 back. But more important, he said, is exposing the company’s failures to protect future consumers.
“I will get my money back. I will drive them absolutely crazy … failure is not an option. The most important thing for me in this is … I don’t want to do nothing. I want to be part of a solution to expose what I think is something that’s just so wrong because emotional stress and anxiety they put you through is unmeasurable,” he said.
“What I hope to get out of this is change. For everybody.”
