Cardinals Say Bogus Charity Scalped Tickets

ST LOUIS (CN) - An amateur baseball league that disguised itself as a charity to score discounted St. Louis Cardinals tickets made five figures scalping those seats, the franchise claims in court.

The Cardinals says they sold 3,500 tickets last year to the Leagues of Extraordinary Gentlemen Inc. dba Lewis & Clark Baseball League.

These discounted tickets were for five games at Busch Stadium last season, and were "to be used for fundraising efforts to support underprivileged youth participation in amateur baseball," the April 24 complaint states.

All the dates "were particularly desirable games," the Cardinals note, and the May 26 "game was a particularly high-demand game as the New York Yankees were in town during famed shortstop Derek Jeter's final season."

"The July 4th date is (and was) a high-demand game due to the holiday," the complaint continues.

Though the ticket-consignment contracts, or TCCs, barred resale of the tickets above face value, the Cardinals say they learned on July 18 "that defendants had systematically placed all or substantially [sic] of their allotted tickets under the TCCs for sale on StubHub for amounts over and above the face value of the tickets."

At this point, the defendants still had discounted tickets, 800 apiece, for Cardinals games on Aug. 3 and Aug. 6, the complaint states.

The Cardinals say they demanded those 1,600 tickets back, and that the tickets were ultimately deactivated and returned to the team.

"In total, 1,723 of the 1,900 tickets provided by the Cardinals to defendants for the three games were sold through StubHub," the complaint states.

The Cardinals say the defendants made more than $122,000 from selling those tickets, receiving "$40,475.04 over the face value of the tickets."

That money rightfully belongs "to the Cardinals, and they intend on distributing the funds to deserving charities," the complaint states.

The Cardinals want punitive damages for fraud, breach of contract, bad faith and other claims.

They are represented in the St. Louis Circuit Court action by Randall Grady with Riezman Berger.

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