Packers ticket broker denies fraud claims

Shawano businessman Douglas Burris took the stand in his civil fraud trial Thursday and told a jury that he never promised to provide Green Bay Packers fans with season tickets indefinitely.

“I couldn’t control ‘forever,’” the 76-year-old businessman testified. “I would never promise tickets forever — that would be ridiculous.”

Burris, who is being sued by nine former customers over his business as a Packers ticket broker, told the jury he was within his rights to revoke tickets from customers and then sell the whole bundle for $1.4 million.

Once the owner of 331 season tickets at Lambeau Field, Burris has been described in court as the onetime largest season ticket holder for any team in any major sport in America.

Testifying on the fourth day of the fraud trial, Burris told jurors that he enjoyed being featured in the New York Times and getting other special attention because of his prolific stockpile of Packers tickets. Having his picture taken and having fans ask for an autograph, he said, made him feel “like a celebrity.”

“I was very impressed with that stuff,” he said. “That’s pretty big stuff.”

The jury at the Shawano County Courthouse is scheduled to begin deliberations Friday, after testimony in the case concluded Thursday afternoon.

The former customers who filed suit against Burris in 2013 contend that he unfairly stripped them of their season tickets after promising them a long-term arrangement. The businessman sold his ticket supply in 2012 — minus 14 tickets he kept for himself — for $1.4 million to Event USA, a Green Bay brokerage authorized by the Packers to market special game packages to fans.

The nine plaintiffs are asking the jury to rule that Burris conducted business fraudulently, and to award them unspecified punitive damages for their losses. Together, they accounted for more than 70 season tickets acquired for many years through Burris’ network.

The plaintiffs include Shawano residents Arlene Martin, Roger Knueppel, Ronald Malueg and Todd Otto, along with Michael Landwehr, of Brookfield, Daryl Dehnke, of Eau Claire, Mark George Most, of River Falls, Grant George Peterson, of Merrill, and Gerald Vosen, of Merrimac.

Some of the plaintiffs testified earlier that Burris had promised them indefinite access to season tickets, and that they intended to pass the tickets to family members in the future.

Burris acquired 331 season tickets in 1991 when he purchased a downtown Shawano tavern once known as Stan & Bud’s, 115 N. Main St. The owners of Stan & Bud’s had been Packers boosters since the 1920s, and they owned a cache of season tickets that were included in the tavern sale.

Later doing business as U Make The Call Inc. and Burris Bar & Grill Inc., Burris developed a network of 76 customers who paid for access to his season tickets rather than endure a waiting list that frequently takes years or even decades for fans to purchase tickets from the team.

In his testimony Thursday, Burris testified that he gave customers favorable deals on ticket prices because he was grateful that they helped him defray the cost of a $463,400 special fee assessed by the Packers to pay for a 2003 expansion and renovation of Lambeau Field. Without financial help from the customers, he said, he might have lost his entire business at that time.

“They helped me out of a hell of a jam,” he said.

Burris testified that he decided to revoke tickets and sell the business to Event USA in 2012 because he had developed health problems and because he figured that the Packers’ Super Bowl championship in 2011 had created
maximum value for his ticket operation.

Until that time, he told jurors, he had no interest in giving up the lucrative business — or the celebrity status that he enjoyed from his ticket stockpile.

“It was quite a thing,” he said, “to own something of that nature.”