StubHub Refunds $500,000 to Customers Shut Out by New York Blackout

By Jem Aswad

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Saturday’s blackout in New York had an outsized effect on the city’s nightlife, with Madison Square Garden and the entire Broadway district seeing multiple shows cancelled due to the the power outage. As a result,  has refunded more than $500,000 worth of tickets for cancelled events.

According to a statement from the company, the StubHub team provided support to thousands of customers who had bought and sold tickets for 27 different music and theatre events from Broadway to Madison Square Garden. All of those events except two were cancelled and not rescheduled; Jennifer Lopez’s Madison Square Garden show will take place tonight, while Dave Chappelle’s performance at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre will now take place on July 21.

“StubHub has our customers’ backs, and in the rare instances where something goes wrong, every ticket is 100% guaranteed by our FanProtect Guarantee,” said Daron Fowlks, StubHub’s vice president of Global Customer Experience. “Saturday’s blackout in New York City was no exception. As soon as we learned of the events affected, our team kicked into action and alerted customers and provided an update on the situation and processed a full refund for the events that weren’t rescheduled.”

While power was restored around four hours after the blackout began at 7 p.m., the timing almost could not have been worse for the city’s nightlife: multiple shows were called off shortly after they had begun.

According to the New York Fire Department, the outage was caused by a transformer fire, leaving much of Rockefeller Center and the Upper West Side powerless. The blackout also affected a number of Broadway productions including “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “Hadestown,” “Lion King,” “Ain’t Too Proud,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “The Cher Show,” which were all canceled.