The University of Louisiana at Monroe Athletic Foundation is suing a third-party ticketing firm, claiming it owes the university $500,000.
The civil lawsuit against the Aspire Group was filed last December but came to light in a report this week in the Monroe News Star.
The Aspire Group handled all ticket sales and services at the university from 2013 to 2015. The athletic foundation claims the group violated the terms of its contract by refusing to pay the foundation $250,000 in 2013-14 and $250,000 in 2014-15 from increased ticket sales guaranteed in the agreement, the newspaper reported. From the News Star:
The lawsuit alleges that Aspire refused to pay the ULM Athletic Foundation the $500,000 total from 2013-15 because it felt the university presented “fraudulently inflated” ticket sales from the 2012-13 athletic year, but no effort was made by Aspire to independently verify the figures before signing the contract.
The foundation and the Aspire Group agreed to the contract on July 22, 2013. Earlier that month, the university hired Brian Wickstrom as athletic director, the same post he held at the University of California at Riverside, where he had a similar agreement with the Aspire Group. The three-year contract between the Aspire Group and the Louisiana at Monroe Athletic Foundation was terminated a year early on July 1, 2015.
The university deferred comment to Wickstrom, who declined to comment to the News Star. The Aspire Group also declined to comment.
