StubHub Faces Class Action Over World Cup Ticket Cancellations
Mark Gallagher did everything right. He planned early, paid big, followed every instruction.
He still watched Canada’s World Cup game against Qatar from home.
On Wednesday, the Vancouver resident moved his anger into a courtroom, filing a proposed class action against StubHub on behalf of Canadian ticket buyers after the resale giant cancelled his tickets — and those of thousands of other fans — hours before kick-off.
His two prime seats for the June 18 match in Vancouver cost $11,407 and were bought back in February. StubHub repeatedly assured him the tickets would drop into his FIFA account. Weeks out. Days out. Even on the day of the game.
They never arrived.
StubHub cancelled the order just before game time, then refunded the ticket price. For Gallagher, that wasn’t remotely the end of it. He’s now seeking punitive damages and alleging a conspiracy of deception, accusing StubHub of advertising tickets “which they knew would not or could not be honoured.”
He may be the first to bring a class action in Canada, but he’s far from alone. Similar lawsuits are already in motion in New York and California over StubHub’s mass cancellation of World Cup tickets.
The Vancouver claim, filed this week, has not yet been tested in court. But it cuts straight into the heart of StubHub’s promise to fans: its heavily marketed “FanProtect Guarantee,” which vows refunds or replacement tickets “within 5 business days” when something goes wrong.
Across North America, a growing number of customers say that guarantee collapses the moment they actually need it.
StubHub, pressed with detailed questions about its refund practices and dispute system, declined to engage point by point and instead issued a short statement, insisting its goal is to “get every fan into their event, every time,” and to provide replacement tickets when problems arise. “We never want to give a refund and no fan wants to receive one,” the company said.
For many, a refund is all they’ve seen — if they’ve seen anything at all. The rest of the losses, they’re told, are theirs to swallow.
Travel, hotels, heartbreak — and no coverage
Ask Kelly Mongillo what the FanProtect Guarantee is worth.
She drove 10 hours from Barrie, Ont., to New Jersey with her elderly father for a June 13 World Cup match, spending about $2,500 on hotels, gas and food on top of $1,800 for tickets bought through StubHub.
Game day. Outside the stadium. The tickets vanished.
StubHub cancelled as they waited at the gates.
Mongillo describes the company’s response as dismissive and says its guarantee ignores the “significant financial losses and disappointment” she and her father suffered. The policy doesn’t cover travel, hotels or any of the costs that turn a ticket into a real-life experience.
“It provides consumers with a false sense of security,” she told CBC News, saying she relied on repeated assurances that replacement tickets would arrive if the originals failed. They didn’t — and she says StubHub has refused to cover any of her travel-related expenses.
Buried in StubHub’s “Global User Agreement” is a waiver designed to block Canadian and U.S. customers from suing for anything beyond the ticket refund itself. Flights, hotels, lost time, legal fees — all pushed outside the company’s responsibility.
When Mongillo went public in June, StubHub tried to limit the damage. The company offered her a refund and replacement tickets to another World Cup match in Toronto. Her father couldn’t attend that game. She went anyway.
The promised cash refund, she says, never came. StubHub, she claims, has since backed away from that part of the deal.
The clock runs faster when lawyers step in
Some fans wait weeks. Others wait months.
Or they hire a lawyer and suddenly don’t have to wait at all.
Jennifer Hale of Toronto paid almost $3,000 to StubHub for tickets to Canada’s June 12 match in Toronto. The order was cancelled. She immediately asked for her money back.
More than a month later, she was still chasing the refund, stuck in a loop of 72-hour promises that led nowhere. Every call, she says, ended with another instruction to wait. At one point, a StubHub agent told her it could take up to 45 days.
While Hale waited, Denis Radetic decided he’d had enough.
The Georgetown, Ont., resident also saw his World Cup tickets cancelled and spent a month listening to explanations and delays. Then he hired a U.S. lawyer who has heard from hundreds of furious StubHub users.
In a sharply worded letter, Radetic demanded a refund plus $3,000 US in legal fees, accusing StubHub of “potential fraud … negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract.”
He suspects the company is testing fans’ resolve.
“I'm sure a lot of people are hesitant about hiring a lawyer,” he said. He believes StubHub is “seeing who will really push them to get the money back versus who will just kind of let it go with time and perhaps not get their money back.”
The pressure worked. On Sunday, StubHub contacted Radetic and refunded his credit card.
The company wouldn’t explain why customers who involve lawyers or the media suddenly find their cases handled with urgency, while others are left in limbo.
Then came the final insult: StubHub sent Radetic a survey asking how he enjoyed the game he never got to see.
A maze called arbitration
Fans who don’t want to give up and can’t afford a lawyer are pointed toward one door: arbitration.
StubHub’s official policy tells unhappy customers to file a “notice of dispute” through a U.S.-based arbitration process. On paper, it’s an alternative to court. In practice, some say, it’s a barrier.
Brad Clements, a Menlo Park, Calif., lawyer who helped Radetic recover his money, says he’s now overwhelmed representing hundreds of StubHub buyers and sellers from both sides of the border.
He calls the arbitration rules deliberately confusing.
“They're trying to make it look like they're going to do right by the consumer and they really care about the consumer,” he said. “But it's a total farce, because they have everything actually designed to intimidate you, delay you, deny you, if you do bring a dispute.”
One example: Clements says StubHub has changed the mailing address for certified dispute notices seven times in the past 14 months. Send your notice to the wrong address and the process stalls before it starts.
On StubHub’s Canadian site, StubHub.ca, there’s no clear information at all on where or how to file a formal dispute.
StubHub declined to say why the address has changed so often or why those details are missing from its Canadian platform.
“They don't want people bringing cases,” Clements said. “They want to make it so godawful for you that you don't go and tell your friends that you won your refund plus interest plus some amount for lost time plus punitive damages, right?”
How StubHub can profit from failure
Most fans assume a cancelled order is bad for everyone. Not quite.
Randy Nichols, a New York-based band manager, says StubHub can actually earn money when a transaction collapses.
Here’s how it works: after StubHub refunds the buyer, it turns to the seller and charges them the full ticket price — even though StubHub never owned the ticket itself. Officially, the company says this is meant to deter fraudulent or bogus listings.
“The way StubHub is currently structured, they charge the seller a 100 per cent fine on every ticket that they don't deliver,” Nichols said. “Which means that StubHub makes money on every order that they don’t fulfill.”
StubHub declined to address that point directly. Its seller policies, however, are blunt: drop a sale, and the company will charge “the greater of (i) 100% of the price of the ticket(s) sold or (ii) the full amount incurred by us to remedy the dropped sale.”
For fans whose tickets vanish at the last minute, that fine is invisible. For StubHub, it’s a revenue line.
The interest game
Then there’s the money StubHub holds.
Jeff Ripley of Spokane, Wash., bought World Cup tickets in December, only to see them cancelled on game day. He’s now in arbitration, arguing StubHub owes him more than just the face value of the tickets.
His question is simple: what happens to the interest on all that cash while fans wait?
“They're sitting on that money, making interest on it. How many thousands of people has this happened to?” he asked.
StubHub reported earning $41 million in interest in its November 2025 earnings report for the previous year. The company declined to comment on how much of that comes from funds tied to ticket purchases and refunds.
Ripley believes regulators need to look closely at how StubHub — which handled the resale of $9.2 billion in tickets globally last year — holds customer money for months at a time. To him, it looks less like a marketplace and more like a bank using free loans.
“There's something wrong,” he said. “They almost work like a financial institution in that I deposited money in a savings or checking account and they got interest.”
He’s blunt about what he wants to see next.
“There has to be some accountability for companies that are taking money, earning interest on it and then not providing a product.”
Gallagher’s lawsuit in Vancouver is one attempt to force that accountability. If the courts agree to hear it as a class action, StubHub may soon have to answer not just to angry fans on the phone — but to a judge.
