U.S. Soccer has a problem on its hands.
A pair of fans in Hawaii have come together and sued U.S. Soccer over the last-second cancelation of this past weekend’s scheduled friendly between the U.S. Women’s National Team and Trinidad & Tobago. The Americans were set to play the Caribbean country in a friendly in Honolulu, Hawaii, but the match at Aloha Stadium was called off less than 24 hours before it was supposed to be played.
As a result, two Hawaii fans who bought six tickets have gotten a pair of lawyers to file a class-action lawsuit against U.S. Soccer. The attorneys are looking to recover the $300 that their clients lost in tickets plus travel and hotel costs, totaling “thousands of dollars”.
Making matters worse for U.S. Soccer is that the Department of Consumer Protection has opened a formal investigation into why the federation didn’t cancel the game much earlier.
On Tuesday, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati told the New York Times that his organization “screwed up”.
What do you think about this news? Do the fans have a strong case here? Expecting this to get resolved quickly or for it to snowball and get worse?
Share your thoughts below.
Ticketmaster manned up and refunded my ticket money within a day. As far as your comment luke there were alot of people who specifically traveled to oahu to see this game. I for one along with my daughter traveled from kauai, spent our xmas money to watch the game. I commend the women for making a stand, we support them. What gets me is the sorry ass im sorry we get from the us soccer president when he royally screwed. Im all for them sending them something to the thousands of youth soccer players who showed up to watch their heroes play. In my book an im sorry doesnt cut it.
http://m.hawaiinewsnow.com/hawaiinewsnow/db_352775/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=EBKDSlP4
For some reason this link doesn’t t show in the desktop site but in does in the mobile site.
I call BS on anyone trying to claim travel expenses. NO ONE booked a trip to Hawaii to see a meaningless friendly on the 7th stop on USWNT victory tour.
Let me rephrase that “NO ONE booked a trip to Hawaii jus to seea meaningless friendly on the 7th stop on USWNT victory tour and not have their dream Hawaiian vacation”.
Gulati is not a moron, when he made those comments he had to have consulted lawyers first. Worst case US Soccer pays out a few hundred bucks, don’t see this going anywhere.
They refunded the money. The only reason it didn’t get called off earlier is the teams don’t get to go to the field until the day before the game and then us soccer was trying to find a way to fix the field so they could still play.
Called it. They were there for over a week or close to and they couldn’t have noticed that earlier. I mean is artificial it does not deteriorate that fast. Not to mention gulati admitted it was their mistake, that alone is the final nail in the coffin. Case closed. That’s why I think the wnt is just throwing a fit the World Cup yes they have my support because it’s not your direct decision that affects the outcome. However, in this situation they made the plans and then complaint about it.
Sue-nil.
Don’t play games on fake surface. EVER!
Football is meant to be played on real grass, not on cancer-causing artificial turf.
I have been hearing these rumours/rumors for awhile then I saw the Real Sports report on HBO about 2 weeks ago. I want to be careful that we don’t mix correlative evidence with causative evidence. That being said, I would not surprised if there is a causative relationship because those black pellets on field turf surfaces are primarily old tire/tyre remnants, and we know the type of carcinogenic crap that is used in tires.
Also, these Gulati pictures are hilarious.
I’d be interested to know what the fine print on the tickets say. I know for most sporting events (or events in general) the purchase has something related to cancelled games/events. I’m wondering if it mentioned a time frame for notification or something in that respect.
This could be very interesting.
I love it. Now I need to get myself a lawyer and round up some people and sue Google for the piece of cr@p they released known as the Nexus 5x.
The last minute cancellation was a farce but I can’t imagine they aren’t refunding tickets. It would be nice if USSF also offered to refund reasonable travel expenses for people who traveled for the game but they certainly aren’t required to.
I read they were refunding tickets….thought that may not be true.
Great way to get an all expense paid trip to Hawaii covered by the USSF.
So they cancelled the game and didn’t even have the decency of returning the money? That’s a new low.
Gulati for FIFA president.