JACKSONVILLE — Denise Bodart is a life-long Packers fan from Shawano, but has never been to a game.
She was excited to visit two friends in Jacksonville with another friend, and go to Sunday's Packers-Jaguars game — so excited that they bought tickets five months ago.
But a few weeks ago, Bodart saw a message on her Ticketmaster account that her tickets had been transferred to someone else — something she says she did not intentionally do.
She immediately reached out to Ticketmaster via multiple channels, but to no avail.
Bodart and Julie Flom flew from Green Bay to Florida on Friday, still trying to get the tickets back, but prepared to tailgate for the game without entering EverBank Stadium.
Finally, Saturday evening, Bodart says the group finally got the tickets reinstated, receiving a call and email from the ticket company.
Prior to that, NBC 26 reached out to Ticketmaster for comment. Less than an hour later, we were told the tickets had been recovered.
"We didn't know what we were going to do," Denise's friend Beth Clark told us Sunday. "We've been planning this for months. To have them all just gone like that, after we spent some money [...] There's a lot of fans that flew in, so it was really fun and we're excited to go tomorrow."
Bodart, Flom and Clark spent time with other Packers fans at a local bar Saturday, and are ready to don the Green and Gold on Sunday.
When NBC 26 reached out to Ticketmaster, a spokesperson sent the following statement:
Overall, our digital ticketing innovations have greatly reduced fraud compared to the days of paper tickets and duplicated PDFs. Having that digital history is also how we are able to investigate the situation and restore fans’ tickets in nearly every case. The top way fans can protect themselves is setting a strong unique password for all accounts – especially for their personal email which is where we often see security issues originate. Scammers are looking for new cheats across every industry, and tickets will always be a target because they are valuable, so Ticketmaster is constantly investing in new security enhancements to safeguard fans.
Ticketmaster did deal with a data breach in May that resulted in stolen user data for over 500 million customers, according to NBC News.
The company acknowledged Bodart's issue has been resolved.
