Fan Sues NFL Over Super Bowl Ticket Pricing
BALDWIN: OK. If you are one of those football fans who dreams of going to the Super Bowl but can't quite afford it because the prices are too high, you are not at all alone. Now there is a man who actually is fighting, legally speaking, to change that. He is Josh Finkelman, a New Jersey businessman, filed a class action lawsuit against the NFL this week. He claims that they are pricing the average fan out of the biggest game of them all, the Super Bowl. Finkelman claims the NFL made only one percent of tickets available for fans, and his lawyer says that violates New Jersey's consumer fraud act. So, Danny Cevallos, our CNN legal analyst, I've never been to the Super Bowl, but I guess they're somewhere in the range of $2,000 and upwards? But is the NFL actually violating a law by making them so expensive?</s>DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: New Jersey, the state of New Jersey, prohibits withholding more than five percent of tickets from any event. This complaint alleges that the NFL is withholding 99 percent of its tickets. And the reason this is bad for consumers is that by withholding it they sell them to secondary buyers who then create this secondary market, and the mark-up is astronomical What's so interesting is that the state of New Jersey itself has used this law to go after ticket-sellers in the past, but the more cynical observer might suggest that it hasn't bugged the NFL because god forbid you scare away the Super Bowl from the state of New Jersey. But, of course, that's only the cynical observer who would make that observation.</s>BALDWIN: OK. So bottom line, see any of this changing anytime soon?</s>CEVALLOS: Like this lawsuit, New Jersey takes a hard-line approach in protecting consumers, especially when it comes to tickets, so I like this lawsuit so far. It will be really interesting to see how the NFL responds, but if you look at the letter and the numbers of the law, it appears that just from this complaint that the NFL may be in violation of New Jersey's consumer protection statute.</s>BALDWIN: Danny Cevallos, thank you very much. And it is warming up across the U.S. after the, quote, unquote, "polar vortex: gripped much of the country, but exactly how cold was it? Here's an example. An escaped inmate actually chose to go back to prison because it was just so darned cold. We'll take a look at some of the more unique stories that came out of the cold snap.