StubHub spokesman says six-hour shutdown part of contract with Chicago Cubs

ByDARREN ROVELL
October 28, 2016, 4:50 PM

— -- Six hours before the first pitch of Game 3 of the World Series on Friday, StubHub stopped its sale of tickets to the game.

The move caused those both selling and looking to buy to scramble to other sites such as GameTime and Vivid Seats.

In the two hours after tickets were pulled from StubHub and pushed to the other sites, the get-in price decreased from $1,690 to $1,290, a drop of nearly 24 percent.

StubHub spokesman Glenn Lehrman told ESPN that the six-hour shutdown has been part of the contract with the Cubs. Lehrman also said the team wanted to keep the contract in place throughout the 2016 playoffs.

Cubs officials said the team has implemented the six-hour sales cut-off for all home games dating to 2013 through their MLB agreement with StubHub. Due to the extraordinary demand and limited supply of World Series tickets, the officials said they are working with the league to remove the six-hour window for the next two home games.

The Cubs are one of a few teams whose contract with the reseller calls for all tickets to be pulled hours before games. When the policy was implemented in 2013, the Cubs had spare tickets to sell. Pulling tickets off the leading online reseller made it more likely that fans would come to the box office.

Tickets to Games 1 and 2 were available on StubHub until the first pitch.

When the site stopped listing tickets, at 1:08 p.m. Central Standard Time, there were about 900 seats remaining on its marketplace.

The average price of a ticket sold on StubHub for Game 3, the first World Series game at Wrigley Field since 1945, hovered around $2,800, a record resale price for a baseball game.