Rockies settle ticket claim

The Colorado Rockies had a few problems with their ticketing for their World Series run when they put them on sale last week - in a disaster that recalled the worst days of Glastonbury, the server fell over (or, if you believe the baseball team, "fell victim to a malicious DOS attack") and there was great upsetment.

Jeff Sobieck was one who was upset; he'd got a confirmation that his purchase of 12 tickets had been successful before the system went down and he launched a lawsuit. The Rockies have settled this out-of-court. The size of the pay-off hasn't been revealed, but Sobieck had been seeking money to cover the amount he could have sold the tickets on for as damages.

In other words: despite the resale of tickets for higher-than-face-value being illegal in Denver, the club has paid off a scalper for loss of earnings on tickets he never received.

Even more curiously, the team has done this despite a 1917 law in the city which would have made it illegal for them to grant entry to anyone who they knew had bought Sobieck's tickets from him:

Denver's ordinance also has prohibited the operator of a ticketed event from selling tickets to anyone who would resell them at a premium, and has made it operators' responsibility to refuse to honor tickets purchased from scalpers, brokers or speculators if the operator "has knowledge of the unlawful purchase of such ticket."

And Harvey Goldsmith thinks the UK ticketing system is unworkable. Surely by revealing that he intended to resell them, Sobieck had effectively made the tickets he hadn't bought in the first place totally valueless?