Basketball fans in Vancouver are upset after tickets for the upcoming Toronto Raptors versus Golden State Warriors pre-season game sold out in minutes.
The Raptors are set to play the NBA Western Conference champion Golden State Warriors, including back-to-back MVP Stephen Curry, Oct. 1 at Rogers Arena ahead of the official season. The much-anticipated game had tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, but before many fans had the chance to secure theirs, the tickets were gone.
READ MORE: Toronto Raptors to face Warriors in Vancouver, then Nuggets in Calgary
“Ticketmaster strikes again,” said one fan on Twitter.
“Irritated with Ticketmaster. Raptors vs warriors sold out immediately. Secondary market flooded with scalps,” wrote Robert Kraljii.
Fans say despite being online at exactly 10 a.m., the Ticketmaster website said no tickets were left.
And while the primary outlet showed no inventory, scalped tickets showed up within seconds on third-party sites like StubHub for double the price.
READ MORE: Calgary fans furious as Raptors tickets scooped up
StubHub currently says they have over 500 tickets available for the game, with the cheapest being $199 USD each up to $3,167 USD.
The tickets were originally prices between $35 and $460 CAD.
Interestingly, relations between StubHub, Ticketmaster, and the Golden State Warriors are less than friendly. StubHub filed a lawsuit in March 2015 against the company and the team, it unfairly required fans looking to resell tickets to use Ticketmaster’s resale exchange.
Specifically, StubHub said Ticketmaster and the Warriors cancelled fans’ regular-season and playoff-game tickets when those fans used StubHub and other exchanges to resell tickets.
The Golden State Warriors said at the time that “a significant number of those tickets are purchased by ticket brokers with the sole intent to resell them at a markup” and they “decided not to renew 2015-16 season tickets held by some ticket brokers, so that we can instead sell those tickets directly to fans on our wait list.”
This is the third consecutive year the Raptors have played a pre-season game in Vancouver. Last year the team tipped off against the Los Angeles Clippers in front of a sold-out arena.
Global News reached out to Ticketmaster for a comment but has not yet received a response.
–With files from the Associated Press
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