StubHub Faces Class Action Over World Cup Ticket Cancellations
Mark Gallagher did everything right. Bought early. Paid big. Planned a once-in-a-lifetime night.
Instead, he got a cancellation notice.
Now the Vancouver fan is taking StubHub to court, fronting a proposed class action on behalf of Canadian ticket buyers after the resale giant cancelled his World Cup seats — and thousands of others — just hours before kick-off.
“I just think the truth needs to come out on what's really going on here,” he told CBC News.
Gallagher had spent $11,407 on a pair of prime tickets for Canada vs. Qatar in Vancouver on June 18, purchased back in February. In the weeks leading up to the match, he says StubHub repeatedly assured him the tickets would land in his FIFA account. The same message came days before. Then hours before.
They never arrived.
StubHub cancelled. Gallagher got his money back. But not his night, not the moment, not the memory he’d planned around.
“Missing the event — that outcome isn't measured in dollars,” he said. “You never get to see it again, even though you had the full intent and followed whatever the rules were to get there. So what I hope to get out of this is change.”
Instead of moving on, he’s pushing back. His lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Vancouver, seeks punitive damages and alleges StubHub engaged in a “conspiracy of deception” by promising tickets “which they knew would not or could not be honoured.”
None of the allegations have been tested in court. But Gallagher is the first to launch a class action against StubHub in Canada, following similar legal salvos in New York and California over the same wave of World Cup cancellations.
StubHub, which promotes a “FanProtect Guarantee” that pledges refunds or replacement tickets “within 5 business days,” is facing a growing backlash from fans who say they’ve been left chasing money, answers, or both. CBC News has heard from scores of customers who describe lengthy delays, disputes and dead ends when they tried to cash in on that promise.
Asked detailed questions about its refund and dispute practices, StubHub declined to respond point by point, instead issuing a brief statement.
“Our goal is to get every fan into their event, every time, and if something goes wrong, we always want to find them replacement tickets," the company said. "We never want to give a refund and no fan wants to receive one — we want you to get to your event.”
Travel, hotels, and a guarantee with limits
For many fans, the ticket price is only part of the bill.
From Barrie, Ont., to New Jersey, it was a 10-hour drive for Kelly Mongillo and her elderly father. She spent about $1,800 on World Cup tickets through StubHub and another $2,500 on hotels, gas and food.
Game day arrived. So did the cancellation.
StubHub pulled the plug while they were standing outside the stadium gates.
Mongillo says the company’s much-advertised FanProtect Guarantee gave her confidence to book the trip, but she now calls it misleading.
“It provides consumers with a false sense of security,” she told CBC News.
“Despite relying on their repeated assurances that replacement tickets would be provided if my original tickets did not come through, they have refused to compensate me for any of those travel-related costs.”
The fine print backs StubHub. Its “Global User Agreement” includes a waiver aimed at blocking Canadian and U.S. customers from suing to recover anything beyond a refund of the ticket price — no travel costs, no hotels, no legal fees tied to cancellations.
When Mongillo first went public in June, StubHub stepped in. The company offered her a refund and replacement tickets to a different World Cup match in Toronto. Her father couldn’t attend, but she accepted the tickets.
The cash, she says, never came. She claims StubHub has since backed away from the refund it promised.
The fans who wait — and the ones who don’t
Some customers keep calling and keep waiting. Others lawyer up.
Jennifer Hale of Toronto paid nearly $3,000 to StubHub for tickets to a Team Canada match in Toronto on June 12. The order was cancelled. She immediately asked for a refund.
More than a month later, she was still empty-handed.
In emails to CBC News, Hale described hours on the phone with StubHub. Each time, she said, she was told to wait another 72 hours. Then another. One agent told her it could take up to 45 days.
“No refund and no contact from them at all,” she wrote. “I’m not sure what else to do?”
Denis Radetic, from Georgetown, Ont., decided he’d had enough of waiting. After about a month of what he describes as excuses, he hired a U.S. lawyer who has now been contacted by hundreds of disgruntled StubHub users.
Radetic’s lawyer sent a letter demanding both a ticket refund and $3,000 US in legal fees, accusing StubHub of “potential fraud … negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract.”
“I'm sure a lot of people are hesitant about hiring a lawyer,” Radetic said. “I feel like StubHub is kind of taking advantage and 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 reached out and refunded his credit card.
The company would not explain why complaints routed through lawyers or the media appear to be handled differently than those from ordinary customers.
Then came the final twist: StubHub followed up with a survey asking Radetic how he enjoyed the game — the one he never saw.
A maze of arbitration
When fans don’t accept StubHub’s refund decisions, the company points them toward arbitration.
Its official policy instructs customers to file “notices of dispute” through a U.S.-based arbitration process. On paper, that offers a path to resolution. In practice, some say, it’s another wall.
Brad Clements, a Menlo Park, Calif., lawyer who helped Radetic and now represents hundreds of StubHub buyers and sellers in both the U.S. and Canada, says the system is built to wear people down.
“They're trying to make it look like they're going to do right by the consumer and they really care about the consumer. 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.”
He points to one detail: over the past 14 months, StubHub has changed the certified-mail address for dispute notices seven times, he says.
On StubHub’s Canadian site, StubHub.ca, there’s no clear guidance at all on where or how to file an official dispute.
StubHub declined to explain the repeated address changes or the lack of dispute instructions on 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?"
When cancelled tickets still pay
Behind the scenes, there’s another wrinkle: StubHub can earn money even when fans never get through the turnstiles.
Randy Nichols, a New York City-based band manager who has studied resale practices, says StubHub profits on cancelled transactions by shifting the burden to sellers.
Once StubHub refunds the buyer, it then charges the seller the full ticket price — even though StubHub never actually held the ticket itself. The company says the policy is designed to deter fraudulent or unreliable listings.
”The way StubHub is currently structured, they charge the seller a 100 per cent fine on every ticket that they don't deliver. Which means that StubHub makes money on every order that they don’t fulfill,” Nichols said.
StubHub declined to comment on his assessment. Its seller policies, however, are clear: “If you dropped your sale, we will charge your payment method an amount equal to 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.”
The interest game
For some fans, the issue runs deeper than a missed match or a slow refund. It’s about what happens to their money while StubHub holds it.
In Spokane, Wash., Jeff Ripley is taking the company to arbitration after his World Cup tickets, bought in December, were cancelled on game day. He’s not just asking for the face value back.
“They're sitting on that money, making interest on it. How many thousands of people has this happened to?” he asked in an interview with CBC News.
StubHub reported earning $41 million in interest in its November 2025 earnings report for the previous year. It facilitated the resale of $9.2 billion in tickets globally over that same period.
The company declined to comment on the interest it earns on customer funds or how long it holds that money before refunds are processed.
Ripley argues that the model looks less like a marketplace and more like a financial operation.
He says StubHub is effectively taking free, short-term loans from its customers — and keeping the interest.
“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.”
“There has to be some accountability for companies that are taking money, earning interest on it and then not providing a product.”
As Gallagher’s class action gets underway in Vancouver and arbitration files stack up on both sides of the border, that question of accountability is no longer just about one cancelled match. It cuts to the heart of how a global ticket powerhouse treats the very fans it promises to protect.
