This year the University of Washington men’s basketball team brought a renewed sense of hope and excitement to the dismal Seattle sports scene. The PAC-10 champs made it into the March Madness dance seeded fourth in the country and traveled to Portland to play. As you can imagine, tickets sold like hot cakes to UW fans throughout the region.

To get those tickets, fans had to go through Ticketmaster and anyone who’s purchased a ticket through the ticket sales giant knows the process can be frustrating. Either tickets sell out in five minutes, the site crashes or you have to enter a lottery and pay for the chance to win tickets.

About a year ago, we started hearing from upset Division One basketball fans who paid to enter ticket lotteries, didn’t win tickets, and never saw a refund for the fee. At a quick glance, it seems like the typical frustrating process to get tickets. Dig a little deeper and you see a double-team effort by Ticketmaster and the NCAA to boost profits and for a while, both organizations got away with it.

Yesterday, Ticketmaster agreed to settle a lawsuit our firm filed last May and handed back application fees to those who didn’t win the chance to get tickets to the NCAA 2009 men’s basketball tournament.

Our original suit claimed both organizations ran the scheme for several years. Only after further discovery in the case, we learned Ticketmaster participated in part of the lottery and only for one year.

The NCAA on the other hand has a much larger issue to face. The organization has not settled and our case continues to move forward.

In the lawsuit, we contend the NCAA allows fans to pay several application fees to increase their chance at winning tickets. Unfortunately, Ticketmaster and the NCAA operate in states in which lotteries are illegal unless run by the state or licensed charities. These organizations don’t fall into either of these categories.

In what we see as a foul play, NCAA appears to have changed its ticketing policies listed on its Web site. The site now indicates that the NCAA reversed course and doesn’t allow multiple entries for ticketing lotteries. If a fan doesn’t win, they receive a full reimbursement of their application fee. There’s been no official announcement from the NCAA and our guess is the organization hopes the change goes unnoticed.

We believe both organizations know the scheme harmed fans and this first settlement against Ticketmaster bodes well for those fans.

We’ll keep you posted on this case and invite you to check out the case page where you can review court documents and press releases.

We’d also love your thoughts on the Ticketmaster settlement and case against the NCAA – what do you think of the practice? Is a ticket lottery fair in some circumstances?