You Can See the Game From the Roof. That Does Not Mean You Can Sell Tickets to the Roof.

For twenty years, a rooftop business across the street from Wrigley Field operated under a 2004 agreement that required it to pay the Chicago Cubs 17% of its gross revenue for the right to sell tickets to watch games inside the ballpark. When the agreement expired at the end of 2023, the rooftop stopped paying and kept selling.

On September 30, 2026, a federal judge barred it from selling those tickets.

In Chicago Cubs Baseball Club, LLC v. Dunican, No. 24-cv-05086 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 30, 2026), the court held that the Cubs own a protectable interest in the live game itself, and that selling access to watch it from neighboring private property is misappropriation. The injunction does not merely stop the rooftop from using Cubs logos. Absent the Cubs’ written consent, it bars the business from selling tickets to view Cubs games and Wrigley Field events at all.

The Pennsylvania Connection

The court’s key precedent comes from western Pennsylvania. In Pittsburgh Athletic Co. v. KQV Broadcasting Co., 24 F. Supp. 490 (W.D. Pa. 1938), a radio station posted observers on its own property overlooking the Pirates’ ballpark and broadcast the games play by play. The station argued it never trespassed. The court enjoined it anyway, reasoning that the team, having paid for the park and the players, owned the benefit of the games. A New York court had reached a similar result a year earlier for a heavyweight title fight in Twentieth Century Sporting Club, Inc. v. Transradio Press Service, Inc., 165 Misc. 71 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cnty. 1937).

The Cubs court extended that reasoning from describing a game to selling the view of one. The rooftop’s own-property defense failed for the same reason it failed in 1938.

The New York Question

In NBA v. Motorola, Inc., 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997), the Second Circuit held that federal copyright law preempts New York’s broad misappropriation doctrine, including the theory of its mid-century broadcast cases, where the claim relates even in part to a copyrighted broadcast. Only a narrow “hot news” claim survives. The Cubs opinion does not mention Motorola, and a rooftop defendant in New York would cite it immediately, including its observation that Congress intended the games themselves to remain in the public domain.

The Cubs’ theory may survive anyway. A rooftop does not copy or retransmit a broadcast; it sells a seat with a view. And Motorola itself identified producing games for live attendance as a league’s primary product, which is exactly what a rooftop competes with. No reported decision in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or New York appears to have addressed the question since Motorola.

Why it Matters Beyond Baseball

The reasoning could reach anyone who invests in staging a live experience, from concert promoters to auction houses, and anyone who sells access to someone else’s event. Two lessons follow.

For event owners, license the view rather than tolerate it, and put a clear end date on the license. The Cubs had a clean record: every other rooftop paid, and this one’s rights had plainly expired.

For businesses near an event, a former license is not a continuing one. The court treated post-expiration use of the Cubs marks as likely to confuse on its own, and refused to let the sole owner out of the case because marketing decisions ran through him. Good intentions did not help; trademark liability is strict.

The seat on the roof may be yours. The game is not.

This post is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.