Some Major League Baseball fans have arrived at ballparks this month to discover their digital tickets missing and already resold on platforms such as SeatGeek and StubHub, according to The New York Times.
In a statement to The Athletic, MLB said scammers gained access to fans’ tickets through the Ballpark app, which is used by all 30 teams, including the Seattle Mariners.
The league stressed that the system itself was not breached, but “bad actors” obtained or guessed fans’ login information from other compromised websites.
“The Ballpark app is operating properly and continues to process tickets for millions of fans who attend MLB games. There is no evidence that this was a breach of the MLB system,” the league said. “Bad actors then have utilized leaked or stolen credentials from other websites in efforts to access the accounts of MLB fans.”
The issue began surfacing around Labor Day, according to a league source familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to speak publicly. MLB has not said how many fans have been affected.
Boston Red Sox fan Nancy Morrisroe said she was locked out of her seats for a September game against the Pittsburgh Pirates despite confirming them on her Ballpark app before leaving home.
By the time she walked the half-hour to Fenway Park, the tickets had vanished.
“I get into the box office, and it was so many people in there saying, ‘I just bought them off of StubHub, I just bought them!’” Morrisroe said.
She described the experience as “incredibly vulnerable” and said her call to MLB’s customer service line over Labor Day weekend took more than an hour.
Morrisroe, a season-ticket holder since 2007, eventually received seats for the game. But she said she continued having trouble with the app even after changing her password.
“There needs to be two-factor authentication (when transferring tickets) or something,” she said. “There needs to be some sort of safeguard. … Now we’re going to be going into the postseason with a lot of money involved.”
Discussions about the problem have spread online.
One Reddit thread had 78 comments as of Friday morning, including screenshots that appeared to show the New York Mets warning fans about “unrecognized transactions.”
The Mets did not respond to The Athletic’s request for comment.
Fans with tickets to games involving large-market clubs such as the Red Sox and Mets appear to be more common targets, according to the league official, because those tickets typically fetch higher resale prices.
StubHub did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
SeatGeek said only that it could not comment while investigations are ongoing.
MLB is urging fans to take immediate precautions. The league advised users to reset their passwords with something new and unique, to log out of all MLB applications, and then log back in with the updated password before leaving for a game.
“We are working tirelessly to address this matter and protect our fans,” MLB said in its statement. “We want all of our fans to have a great experience when they come to the ballpark and we are sorry that some fans have had to deal with an issue related to their tickets.”
The league has promoted its Ballpark app as a success story in recent years.
In 2022, MLB said 32 million tickets were scanned through the app, with 99.5 percent of fans retrieving tickets successfully, up from 85 percent in 2021.
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