StubHub to penalize brokers reselling Yankees tickets

Brokers who tried to make a profit on Jeter's retirement announcement will be penalized by StubHub. (Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)

Following Derek Jeter's retirement announcement on Feb. 13, ticket prices for Yankees games -- especially the final home game of the 2014 season -- skyrocketed. Some brokers sold tickets to the game before Jeter's announcement, then re-listed them when prices jumped to make a bigger profit.

StubHub is penalizing the brokers who cancelled original sales to seek higher prices. The site told those brokers that they may either honor the original sale or keep the current listing, according to ESPN's Darren Rovell. But if they choose to keep the current listing, StubHub will find tickets at the market price for the original purchaser and place the charge on the broker's credit card.

SI WIRE: David Ortiz: Derek Jeter is the ‘one guy that the baseball game is going to miss’

StubHub is forcing sellers who already resold their tickets to pay a fee, which will be used to provide tickets to the original buyers. From ESPN's report:

StubHub allows sellers to cancel sales, but not in the quantity that happened after Jeter announced his retirement on Feb 13. In the hour after Jeter's announcement, the cheapest ticket to the Yankees' final game of the 2014 season against the Red Sox at Fenway rose from $26 to more than $200, while the listing on all tickets rose by more than 250 percent. "These sellers abused the policies in our user agreement and as a result, we have reached out to them," StubHub spokesman Cameron Papp said.