INDIANAPOLIS — Some Indiana University football fans are calling for more accountability from third-party ticket platforms after they say problems with StubHub kept them from getting into Saturday’s Big Ten Championship.
“Now we're outside the stadium and we hear the game start,” recalled Jacqueline Jarosz an IU fan.
“Bad news, I don’t have tickets to the Big Ten Championship game because StubHub never got them to us,” said IU senior Nathan Shawl on a TikTok video he posted.
Shawl was planning on attending the game with his family.
“We get told, 'hey, three hours before the game we’ll release your tickets to you from the seller, ' the seller being the Big 10. And then they tell us we’ll replace your tickets because we can’t get your tickets to you," said Shawl.
But the tickets never arrived. The same happened to Jacqueline Jarosz; they both bought tickets weeks earlier after IU beat Oregon.
“We get in the car, I download the parking pass and I go to download the tickets, and it says these tickets have been downloaded to another email.”
Jarosz traveled to Indianapolis from New Jersey with her husband and three sons. Her youngest is an IU senior. She said the family spent nearly five hours on the phone trying to get help.
“We call back one more time. I said Look, I’ve confirmed someone else's name is on these tickets. I said you are still selling tickets now on StubHub. I want tickets. They said, ‘I can’t do that, but we will call you back in 24 hours to help you.’”
Jarosz says it was a moment the family can’t get back.
“They really messed up what was supposed to be a very special weekend for my family and when your kids live in three different states, you don’t get that a lot.”
Shawl says missing the game was also a major disappointment.
“I was really looking forward to making content and obviously seeing IU hopefully win, what I thought was hopefully then, now has come to fruition, so it was a pretty big deal for me to go.”
Now, both say they want more accountability from ticket platforms.
“They didn’t explain too much to us, kind of just like being like, well, we can't do too much about the situation," said Shawl.
“I get what they are, they’re a third-party ticket seller, so they don’t actually own the tickets, but they’re also collecting the fees and they should have someone there who can solve the problem for us,” said Jarosz
StubHub refunded both families and offered discounts on future ticket purchases.
A StubHub spokesperson said replacement tickets are always the company’s first choice, but availability depends on cost and inventory.
In a statement about Jarosz case, StubHub said, "We’re sorry this fan had a frustrating experience on game day. While the seller provided proof of the ticket transfer to the buyer’s email on file, our team worked quickly to investigate and has issued a full refund along with a 50% credit toward a future purchase as a gesture of goodwill. Every order on StubHub is backed by our FanProtect Guarantee."
