Posted on 01/13/2014 7:19:01 PM PST by This Just In
In what is emerging as the NFL most heated and best rivalry, the Seattle Seahawks will play host to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday for a trip to the Super Bowl.
But fans from California won't be able to purchase tickets for the game at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, which is the loudest NFL stadium and arguably its most hostile.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Your comments are in valid on this thread. You have a California zip code. /jk
Every team does this. Hardly a scandal.
chickenhawks
Your comment is disqualified due to your SeaHawks fan status. :^)
Perhaps Seaweed?
Restraint of trade
I’d be curious to hear from a lawyer on this one, but I always understood “restraint of trade” to be a claim that would be brought by the business, not a potential customer.
seachickens
Seattle San Francisco tickets for sale...get ‘em while I got ‘em. California residents only.
seaweed eating Seachickens hehe...
This would be true only if the Seattle Seahawks owned the Stadium. I believe the Stadium was built with tax money by the State of Washington and is owned and operated by the State. In that sense the Seattle Seahawks are a quasi-public entity. The Seahawks are just another example of crony capitalism at work. A marriage between the state and corporations.
Very few Major League sports teams own their own stadiums. I believe the LA Dodgers may be the only one left.
The Stadium belongs to the State of Washington.
A private company choosing which customers they want to serve is not a “restraint of trade.”
This is so gonna backfire on Seattle. This story is getting a lot of air time down here, as if the Niners weren’t fired up enough already. Now you got all the rich silicon valley folks ready to pay $1,000 for a ticket. Plenty of Seachoke fans will gladly sell their tickets for that much dope money. Besides, the ticket sales in Montana, Idaho, Nevada and even Oregon will be 90% Niner fans.
The tickets are for a game in a stadium owned and managed by the State of Washington. Hence the Seahawks are a quasi-public entity and bound by the same access rules that a government agency would be bound by.
I would agree with you if the Seahawks owned the Stadium, but they don't. It was bought and paid for with tax money.
Excellent point. They should call it The Peoples CenturyLink Field Stadium. An even better reason to stay home and watch the game off of the big screen.
That has absolutely no basis in the law. Yes, the stadium is publicly owned, but it is leased by the Seahawks for their games. As far as I know, the State of Washington has no role in ticket sales or policies, and does not benefit from such sales. The fact that it is a publicly-owned stadium does not mean that the team cannot decide who can/cannot buy tickets to the game.
Actually it does. The State cannot lease their property to companies that violate public policy. I am sure that the contract contains equal access provisions and other clauses that would prohibit them from engaging in discriminatory ticket sale practices.
In this case by deliberately denying access to Californians to a public arena owned by the State of Washington, there is a violation of the privileges and immunities clause as enunciated in Sáenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489 (1999), specifically "the right to be treated as a welcome visitor rather than a hostile stranger".
Saenz v. Roe is inapplicable. That case involved denying out-of-state people certain public benefits (if I recall correctly, it had something to do with welfare benefits for people who recently moved to the state). Here, the ‘benefit’ is, again, a product sold by a private company. The fact that the team leases a public stadium does not make the team a quasi-public entity.
You’re confusing freedom of association with free markets.
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