North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson is investigating complaints about Stanley Cup Final ticket sales at Lenovo Center, after fans said they were locked out of buying seats and pushed toward the resale market. His office has received 20 complaints against Ticketmaster tied to the Hurricanes' playoff ticket sales.
The complaints came as fans searched for answers about why tickets for the Carolina Hurricanes' run to the Stanley Cup Final were so hard to get at face value. One season ticket holder said more than 24,000 people were ahead of them in the virtual queue. Another fan said they paid more than $2,600 for three upper-level seats after giving up on the primary sale.
Jackson said many of the complaints came from season ticket holders who had received presale access codes but still could not complete a purchase. He said his office is hearing from fans who spent hours online waiting for tickets, only to find themselves pushed into the secondary market, where prices could jump two times, three times or even ten times higher.
That complaint is colliding with Ticketmaster's own explanation. The company said most Stanley Cup Final tickets were sold to Carolina Hurricanes season ticket holders and said each round of the playoffs, including the Finals, went as planned without incident or technical issues. Jackson has asked Ticketmaster for information about presale queues, reported technology issues and steps to monitor bots and other bad actors.
The dispute is especially sharp because fans say they were shut out even when they thought they had the right access, while Ticketmaster says the sale worked. Jackson also said North Carolina's price gouging laws do not apply here because no state of emergency was declared, limiting what his office can do on pricing even as complaints continue to come in.
Ticketmaster acknowledged receiving Jackson's letter and said it would respond by the end of the week. Jackson said fans who ran into problems buying Stanley Cup Final tickets can still file complaints with the attorney general's office, and that answer could show whether the issue was a technical failure, a bot problem or something else entirely.
