Vivid Seats Class Action Says Company Sells Tickets at Inflated Prices

A class action lawsuit claims that Vivid Seats sells speculative tickets at inflated prices.

Plaintiff Todd Giesea alleges that Vivid Seats, a company that offers pre-sale event tickets to the general public, misrepresents the nature, quality, and price of tickets sold on its site by selling speculative tickets instead of obtained tickets, and jacking the price up of tickets beyond the price offered by an event’s presenting organization.

Giesea says he purchased tickets for an event through Vivid Seats under the impression that Vivid had already obtained the event tickets and that the prices were the same as what would be offered by the event’s presenter.

However, the plaintiff states that he then went on the presenter’s website only to find that tickets had not gone on sale yet, even in a pre-sale. Thus, Giesea claims that the tickets he was sold by Vivid Seats were “speculative” tickets, and Vivid increased the ticket prices by about 300 percent.

The Vivid Seats class action lawsuit claims that this practice constitutes misrepresentation on Vivid’s part. According to Giesea, Vivid Seats explicitly states that it “does not engage in speculative selling of tickets,” and he claims that this statement is false. He argues that the company violates consumer protection statutes including the Unfair Competition Law and False Advertising Law.

Giesea alleges that this misrepresentation and assurance is the reason why he and many other consumers choose to purchase tickets through Vivid as opposed to other services. The Vivid Seats class action states that “consumers purchase [Vivid’s] pre-sale tickets advertised to be of a certain nature and quality, and in the case at bar, it did so under the impression that consumers are purchasing available tickets for a particular event for a set price and not a speculative one.”

Thus, the Vivid speculative ticket sales class action lawsuit claims that the company profits concretely from their deceptive and unlawful practice of selling speculative tickets at inflated rates. The Vivid ticket sale class action lawsuit claims that the practice of selling speculative tickets is in direct contradiction to the company’s policy of not selling speculative tickets, but the company does not disclose its policies to consumers at the time of their purchase.

The Vivid ticket price hike class action lawsuit claims that consumers depend on the reliability of a product or service’s advertising to make an informed purchase, and that reasonable consumers would believe Vivid’s marketing around the nature, quality, and price of the tickets it sells.

Giesea seeks damages for himself and similarly affected consumers to compensate for the financial loss incurred by purchasing tickets at falsely inflated prices. He claims that he, like many other consumers, would not use Vivid’s services at all had he known that the company’s ticket prices were inflated and that the tickets it sold were not actually available.

The plaintiff is represented by Todd M. Friedman, Adrian R. Bacon, Meghan E. George, and Thomas E. Wheeler of the Law Offices of Todd M. Friedman PC.

The Vivid Seats Speculative Ticket Selling Class Action Lawsuit is Todd Giesea v. Vivid Seats LLC, et al., Case No. 4:18-cv-01776-YGR, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.