NFL Super Bowl Ticket Class Action Lawsuit Dismissed

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A federal judge has dismissed the most recent class action filed by a football fan that says the NFL’s Super Bowl ticket policy violates New Jersey law.

U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan dismissed plaintiff Josh Finkelman’s second amended complaint on Wednesday with a one-sentence order.

The dismissal shuts down Finkelman’s third attempt at bringing an NFL class action lawsuit alleging the league violated New Jersey law by not making enough tickets for Super Bowl XLVIII available to the public.

Finkelman filed this NFL class action lawsuit in January 2014. He challenged the league’s practice of selling no more than one percent of Super Bowl tickets to the general public.

The plaintiff says this practice forces the vast majority of fans into the secondary ticket market, where they are doomed to being price-gouged.

The remaining tickets are reserved for league insiders like sponsors, the media, and the teams themselves, he alleges.

Secondary sellers allegedly increase their own profits by packaging the tickets with other amenities like hotel stays and airfare, he says.

Finkelman alleges profits from the secondary ticket sales eventually make their way back to the NFL.

By restricting ticket sales to the public, the plaintiff argues, the NFL violates the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits companies from withholding from the public any more than five percent of tickets for any event.

Finkelman claims that because of the NFL ticket policy, he had to pay $2,000 for a ticket that had only an $800 face value.

He alleges the NFL’s own data shows $600 tickets from the previous year’s Super Bowl sold for $3,000. He claims one Super Bowl package sold for nearly $19,000.

The NFL counters that it doesn’t sell any tickets to the public but instead distributes them through a lottery.

Since Finkelman didn’t enter the lottery, he can’t say that the NFL’s ticket policy was what led to the high price he paid for a ticket, the league argues.

The plaintiff’s current effort is an attempt to rally following dismissal of his previous complaint, a dismissal that was upheld by a federal appeals court.

The Third Circuit agreed that the exorbitant price Finkelman paid for a ticket could not be traced to the league’s policies, and therefore Finkelman had no standing to sue.

After the appeal, Finkelman came back with a second amended complaint, laying out economic expert opinions that purportedly pinned the price gouging on the NFL.

The NFL countered that the new complaint still suffers the same failures that got the previous complaint dismissed, failures that the new expert opinions did nothing to cure.

The league argued that packing the complaint with expert opinions does nothing to change the fact that Finkelman never entered the ticket lottery.

It was his lack of participation in the lottery that stops him from establishing causation and harm, the league argued.

“The Third Circuit did not find that Finkelman’s amended complaint lacked an opinion necessary to support this theory – it lacked facts. So does the second amended complaint,” the NFL said.

The plaintiff is represented by attorneys Bruce Nagel and Greg Kohn of Nagel Rice LLP.

The NFL Super Bowl Ticket Class Action Lawsuit is Finkelman v. National Football League, et al., Case No. 3:14-cv-00096, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

UPDATE: On Dec. 15, 2017, in a precedential opinion, a Third Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision to dismiss a class action lawsuit alleging that by failing to print enough tickets for the 2014 Super Bowl, the National Football League falsely inflated prices in violation of New Jersey State law.

UPDATE 2: On Jan. 9, 2019, New Jersey Supreme Court justices handed down a decision in an NFL class action lawsuit that the 2014 Super Bowl ticket public lottery was not a state statutory violation.