With five minutes left in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, security personnel at San Antonio’s Frost Bank Center approached\u00a0Rodolfo \u201cRudy\u201d Lopez.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAre you Mr. Lopez?\u201d they asked.<\/p>\n
The South Side business owner thought he was being summoned from his seat for some kind of public recognition. After all, he’d been a Spurs season\u00a0ticketholder for 15 years, and he had paid for a commemorative “Lopez family” paver<\/a> displayed outside the arena.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n He was in for a surprise. The security guards were there not to praise Lopez but to banish him. They escorted him and his 12-year-old son to the rear of the arena and told him they were being ejected because Lopez had resold tickets outside\u00a0Ticketmaster, the team’s authorized marketplace.<\/p>\n Five days later, on June 10, Spurs Sports & Entertainment sent him a \u201cNotice of Trespass\u201d revoking his four season tickets and banning him from the Frost Bank Center, The Rock at La Cantera, Toyota Field and other SS&E properties for an entire year.<\/p>\n READ ALSO: What does it take to get banned from the NBA? These people could tell you.<\/a><\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n It was part of a broader Spurs crackdown on season ticketholders accused of violating resale rules during the 2026 playoffs. Those affected include longtime customers who say the team offered no specifics about what they did wrong. Some have protested, insisting to the Spurs in correspondence that they resold their seats via Ticketmaster and are being punished without cause.<\/p>\n Asked for comment, Spurs spokesperson Liberty Swift referred the San Antonio Express-News to the team’s terms of sale,<\/a> which forbid raffling or auctioning off tickets or reselling them through “unauthorized secondary market sites.” The document advises customers that buying and selling of season tickets “is actively monitored across all resale platforms.”<\/p>\n Sports teams rigorously police resale activity for various reasons. Requiring ticketholders to use approved channels guarantees teams a cut of resale transactions and allows them to collect names, emails and other information for marketing. Franchises say an added benefit is enhanced security within arenas: Management knows who will be in each seat and can prevent fans who have been banned for misconduct from sneaking back in.<\/p>\n It’s also a way to thwart counterfeiters and other scam artists, whose deceptions could damage a team’s brand.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n As Lopez learned, the punishment for violating resale rules can be severe, and\u00a0customers\u00a0have limited recourse. A season ticket is not the purchaser’s personal property; under the fine-print terms of sale, it’s a license to attend games, and it can be revoked with or without compensation, depending on the circumstances. The terms of sale say\u00a0ticketholders must resolve disputes with the Spurs\u00a0through arbitration, not lawsuits.<\/p>\n Rodolfo “Rudy” Lopez, a Spurs\u00a0season ticketholder for 15 years, learned from this letter that his season passes had been revoked and he had been banned from the Frost Bank Center for a year.<\/p>\n Mark\u00a0Burnett, a San Antonio Spurs super fan who runs the \u201cSpurs Sixth Man\u201d accounts on Instagram and Facebook, said he has been hearing from season ticketholders<\/a> whose privileges were recently revoked or suspended.<\/p>\n “This official notice started hitting inboxes just after noon on July 8,” Burnett said in a social media post. “From what I\u2019m hearing, the majority of affected members hold 10-game packages. Many are insisting they did not violate any resale rules and are now waiting on responses from their ticket reps after pushing back on the emails.”<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Lopez, 49, acknowledges that he resold Spurs tickets in online raffles, including one that raised money for\u00a0funeral costs for Jose Luis \u201cJoey\u201d Rodriguez III<\/a>, 17. The teenager fell from a vehicle on May 28 during a Spurs honking celebration on the South Side, suffered a severe brain injury and died five days later at University Hospital.<\/p>\n The one-page notice Lopez received from SS&E, signed by Spurs general counsel Bobby Perez, said he had been declared persona non\u00a0grata “due to your breach of the\u00a0NBA Fan Code of Conduct<\/a> and non-compliance with the terms and conditions applicable to your season ticket membership.\u201d<\/p>\n The letter concluded by saying that if Lopez set foot on SS&E property during his year-long exile, he would be considered a trespasser.<\/p>\n Swift declined to specify what provisions of the code of conduct Lopez had disobeyed. She did say the organization’s action was not related to Lopez’s fundraising for the Rodriguez funeral.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Lopez said he did not realize the Spurs prohibit raffles and other\u00a0resales outside approved platforms. He denied ever violating the code of conduct, which bars abusive language, fighting, interfering with a game and other disruptive behavior.<\/p>\n ‘Through thick and thin’<\/p>\n A fan who asked to be identified only as\u00a0Amalia told the Express-News her season passes were also yanked. She said she had been a season\u00a0ticketholder for more than 10 years.<\/p>\n A July 8 letter from the Spurs informed Amalia that the team had reviewed her ticket resale activity and determined that she violated Section 12 of the ticket terms. Her season-ticket membership was revoked, and the notice said she was not eligible to renew her season passes or purchase a Spurs playoff package for the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Her notice, unlike the one sent to Lopez, did not ban her from the Frost Bank Center, and it stated that she could still buy single-game tickets for the regular season and playoffs.<\/p>\n Amalia, 64, said she had sold about 90% of her tickets this past season because her overnight work schedule prevented her from attending many games. But she said she used the Spurs\u2019 authorized resale portal, as she had for years.<\/p>\n \u201cI did it through Ticketmaster, just like I\u2019m supposed to,\u201d she\u00a0said.<\/p>\n She replied to the Spurs by email on July 8, saying she had resold her tickets \u201cthrough the proper channels.\u201d In a reply email dated July 9, the team said its determination “remains unchanged.”<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Amalia said she suspects the Spurs have become more aggressive about revoking tickets now that demand has increased due to the \u201cWemby effect” and the team\u2019s playoff run.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know that it\u2019s greed, but I think it\u2019s money over loyalty,\u201d Amalia said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been there through thick and thin, and now our season tickets are gone.\u201d<\/p>\n Spurs guard Dylan Harper drives to the basket against New York\u00a0Knicks guard Mikal Bridges during Game 5 of the NBA Finals at the Frost Bank Center. It was the Spurs’ first Finals appearance since 2014.<\/p>\n Sam Owens\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n Facebook ‘waffle’\u00a0<\/p>\n Lopez owns a sports bar, event spaces and other South Side businesses. In 2021, he made an unsuccessful bid for the District 3 city council seat. He considers himself one of the Spurs’ most loyal fans and said his name appears on a gold wall honoring people who have held season tickets for more than 10 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n This year, his four seats cost him $45,000 for the regular season, and by the time the Spurs reached the\u00a0NBA Finals, he had spent an additional $25,000 to $30,000 on playoff tickets, he said.<\/p>\n As proof, he shared\u00a0screenshots of payment confirmations for $26,557.89 in Spurs-related charges between April 2 and June 10. He said he could not retrieve his full account history because he was\u00a0locked out of\u00a0Ticketmaster after the Spurs revoked his season ticket membership.<\/p>\n During the team’s six-year string of losing seasons, he could barely give his seats away, Lopez said. This year, however, they were in high demand.<\/p>\n It was the team’s first appearance in the\u00a0NBA\u00a0championship round since 2014. Lower-level seats at the Frost Bank Center\u00a0were selling for many times their face value on Ticketmaster. The opening game of the finals against the New York Knicks was scheduled for June 3.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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