What happens to season tickets for your favorite sports team in a divorce?
Sometimes the passion for a sports team that connected the parties while dating becomes the most contention asset in a divorce. Season tickets to your favorite team can be difficult to divide, and in some circumstances, not able to be transferred at all. Here are some key tips and examples on what to do if you and your spouse have season tickets.
How did you get the tickets?
How you came to be season ticket holders may dictate what can happen with them in a divorce. For example, if one person received them by gift or inheritance, the tickets could be considered their separate property and not up for division in a divorce settlement. If the parties bought the tickets with marital funds during the marriage, tickets are likely to be considered on the table for negotiation.
Are there restrictions on the tickets?
The second thing to look at is the contract between the seat holder and the team regarding the tickets. These terms and contracts vary greatly and may mean seats cannot be sold, transferred or divided. Terms vary quite a bit by team, league, and even ticket type and this should be investigated before any negotiation.
The general framework
Season tickets / PSLs (Personal Seat Licenses) vs. single-game tickets are treated very differently:
- Single-game tickets are almost always freely transferable — no real restrictions.
- Season ticket accounts are usually governed by a contract (often called a Seat License Agreement, Ticket Holder Agreement, or similar) between the team and the original purchaser. These are where you find real restrictions.
Common restriction patterns you'll encounter
Season tickets / PSLs (Personal Seat Licenses) vs. single-game tickets are treated very differently:
- Single-game tickets are almost always freely transferable — no real restrictions.
- Season ticket accounts are usually governed by a contract (often called a Seat License Agreement, Ticket Holder Agreement, or similar) between the team and the original purchaser. These are where you find real restrictions.
Common restriction patterns you'll encounter
- Right of first refusal / team approval required — Some teams (NFL is notorious for this) require season ticket transfers to go through the team's office rather than a private sale. The team can sometimes block a transfer to a buyer they don't approve of, or charge a transfer fee.
- Non-transferable except by death or divorce — Ironically, some agreements specifically carve out divorce and death as the only permissible transfer events outside team-approved channels. Worth checking — this could actually work in your client's favor.
- PSLs as property, not just tickets — Personal Seat Licenses (common in NFL, some MLB/NBA venues) are often treated as a distinct property right separate from the tickets themselves. PSLs can sometimes be sold on secondary markets (StubHub-type PSL marketplaces exist) but the team often retains a right of first refusal or requires reassignment through their office. The PSL itself may have real resale value that needs to be valued and divided, separate from the annual ticket cost.
- Waitlist-based season tickets (common with teams that have decades-long waitlists — Packers, Bears, some NBA/NHL teams) — these are often explicitly non-transferable except to immediate family, and "selling" your spot on the list may violate the agreement entirely, even if it happens informally all the time.
- Some teams flatly prohibit resale of season ticket rights to anyone outside the family, full stop, with the seat reverting to the team or the waitlist if the account holder gives it up.
Teams/situations with unusual transfer provisions
Green Bay Packers (NFL) — the standout for divorce specifically Their policy names divorce directly: upon divorce or 
separation, the team will honor a stipulation authorizing retention or transfer to one or both parties — but absent a stipulation, the tickets revert to the team, who then decides how to divide them. Because of the ~140,000-person waitlist, the Packers strictly prohibit any transfer outside these narrow authorized circumstances, and any attempt to circumvent the policy can mean revocation of the season tickets entirely. Practical implication: you need a court-ordered stipulation specifically addressing the tickets, or the team can simply take them back and reassign them off the waitlist.
Tampa Bay Rays — Spring Training tickets — the most aggressive anti-divorce-transfer language I found This one is worth flagging specifically because it's drafted to defeat divorce property division: spring training season ticket holders are prohibited from transferring their seats by sale, gift, will, trust, property settlement, or any other means — and any court order directing distribution of the tickets to someone other than the listed holder will result in the Rays immediately withdrawing the license, refunding only what's owed. In other words, a Rays spring training account is essentially non-divisible by court order — a divorce court can award it, but the team's response is to cancel it and refund the original price, not honor the transfer.
Chicago Cubs — non-transferable by design, no exceptions carved out Cubs season ticket accounts are explicitly structured as a non-transferable, non-renewable, revocable, limited license, and payment by anyone other than the original licensee does not constitute or effectuate a transfer or assignment. Unlike the Packers or Broncos, the Cubs' public terms don't carve out spouse/death/divorce exceptions — it's silent, meaning any transfer likely requires going through the team directly.
Atlanta Braves — similar "revocable at will" structure Braves tickets are framed as a non-transferable revocable license, with the team reserving the right to revoke it at its sole discretion, for any reason, at any time. Useful for your Georgia practice specifically, given your location.
St. Louis Cardinals — caps and account-pooling rules that matter for high-volume holders Less about divorce, more relevant if a client has a large or multi-account holding: holders may not resell more than 60% of their season package in a year, and one person or affiliated group may control only 12 season ticket seats total, even across multiple accounts under different names. This matters if a divorcing couple has tickets split across entities or family members — the Cardinals will aggregate them as a single "controlled" block.
FC Barcelona — instructive non-US comparator, fee-based degree-of-kinship system If you ever get an international/expat case: transfers are restricted by formal degree of kinship — free between spouses/registered domestic partners, parents/children, and siblings, but transfers to unrelated people cost the non-refundable equivalent of six season tickets. Notably, the policy explicitly recognizes "registered domestic partners," which is unusual.
New England Patriots — "Pass It On" program Born out of a 2004 controversy: after media attention over the team refusing to let a deceased holder's son keep his father's tickets, the Patriots created "Pass It On," letting holders transfer to immediate family for a fee of $2,000–$5,000 per ticket depending on seat location. Worth knowing because this means transfer has a real, team-imposed cost — relevant when you're valuing the asset or negotiating who absorbs that fee.
Things to consider in your divorce
The common thread across nearly all of these: the ticket is legally the team's property, not the holder's (true for Cubs, Braves, Guardians, generally for NFL teams too). That means:
- A divorce decree alone often cannot force a transfer — the team can simply refuse, revoke, or cancel rather than comply, as the Rays policy makes explicit.
- The safest drafting approach (the Packers model) is to get the team's ticket office to pre-approve or co-sign the stipulation before finalizing the decree, rather than relying on the decree alone to effectuate transfer.
- For PSL-holding teams (Bears, Steelers, Jets, Cowboys, Giants, Diamondbacks, Giants(MLB), Cardinals(MLB) among others noted earlier), the PSL itself is more genuinely a transferable/sellable asset separate from the annual tickets — that's the cleaner divisible property; the annual ticket renewal right is the murkier one.
Your options? If you have an Amicable Divorce maybe you can continue to each have your normal seat at the game?
Not THAT Amicable? Maybe alternate who gets to go to what game so you can both continue to cheer on your team.
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