The Chicago Cubs secured a permanent injunction this month barring neighboring facility Wrigley View Rooftop from selling tickets to watch games, concerts and other events at Wrigley Field.
It was a decisive win in a multiyear legal battle over how far neighboring companies can go in profiting from another business’s activities. But it doesn’t end the legal battle.
This week, the clerk for U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman issued a docket entry stating that the case has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. The 7th Circuit’s docket also identifies Wrigley View Rooftop and its owner, Aidan Dunican, listed as appellants.
As of now, Wrigley View Rooftop’s website says: “All ticket sales have paused at this time. We are currently not accepting reservations or inquiries for future games or private events. Thank you for your understanding.”
While Coleman rejected legal arguments offered by Wrigley View Rooftop, an appellate panel could find otherwise. Coleman reasoned that Wrigley View Rooftop—which the Cubs have derided as a parasite—misappropriates the experience of live Cubs games by selling rooftop seats, usually for around $125 to $150, in a building across the street from the famed ballpark.
The reasoning is relatively straightforward. The judge found it problematic for the owner of one property to profit from selling seats that allow fans to watch live events occurring on neighboring property.
The Cubs spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on player payroll and other expenses to deliver the product of live baseball games in an enclosed ballpark. To watch in person at Wrigley, or any MLB ballpark, requires a ticket. People who instead paid Wrigley View Rooftop for seats might otherwise have paid the Cubs to watch games from Wrigley Field. The Cubs also presented evidence that some consumers were confused about whether Wrigley View Rooftop was affiliated with the team.
Coleman found instructive a 1938 ruling in favor of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who challenged a radio station that placed observers on a rooftop next to Forbes Field and paid them to provide play-by-play for an unauthorized radio broadcast. She surmised that Pittsburgh Athletic Co. v. KQV Broadcasting Co. is on point with the Cubs’ lawsuit, since both cases concern misappropriation through observation from a neighboring property.
While Coleman’s ruling is logical, reasonable minds could disagree about the underlying legal questions. After all, 7th Circuit judges—or, potentially later, U.S. Supreme Court justices—could find it problematic that the Cubs have effectively shut down a business located on property that the Cubs don’t own.
To that end, Wrigley View Rooftop has emphasized a different baseball case from long ago: Detroit Base-Ball Club v. Deppert (1886).
The case involved John Deppert Jr., who lived next to Recreation Park, where the Detroit Wolverines of the National League played. Deppert built seats in a barn to accommodate about 100 people and sold tickets for less than the Wolverines charged for entry into Recreation Park. The Wolverines sued Deppert, but the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in his favor, reasoning that the team lacked a legal right to use or control the use of an adjoining property it didn’t own.
Wrigley View Rooftop has also insisted that its roof viewshed includes Wrigley Field, among other properties in Chicago; that’s what happens when one building is next to another in a large city. Wrigley Field, built in 1914, is surrounded by buildings and rooftop businesses. Wrigley View Rooftop argues that Cubs owners, including the Ricketts family, knew what they were getting into by buying a team that plays in an open-air, urban ballpark. It has suggested that the accessible view from its structure “may be due to [the Cubs’] intentional lack of fencing or other enclosure.”
Wrigley View Rooftop also insists that the Cubs’ lawsuit demands a “new property right” involving “visibility of a live sporting event from neighboring private property,” with sightlines converted into property rights.
As Wrigley View Rooftop sees it, there’s no limiting principle allowing one sports business to block a neighbor from selling seats with a view.
During the litigation, Wrigley View Rooftop suggested that, if the Cubs win, homeowners who live next to golf courses used for PGA Tour tournaments could be “required to pay royalties merely because they profit from proximity to an event visible from their property.”
The concern may be overstated, especially since homeowners don’t ordinarily sell seats. But to the extent 7th Circuit judges worry about the implications of Coleman’s order, they might find it possible that it will affect more properties than Wrigley Field.
In the appeal, the Cubs will be ready to counter these and other potential arguments. The team has consistently said it’s not claiming to control Wrigley View Rooftop’s property rights. Instead, the Cubs say they want to stop what they—and Judge Coleman—deem misappropriation of the Cubs’ property right. Wrigley View Rooftop was found to misappropriate by selling tickets to games and events at Wrigley Field, which exclusively belongs to the Cubs.
An appeal puts more than the future of Wrigley View Rooftop at issue.
It tests how far a sports team can claim control over the commercial value of views beyond its property lines—and whether neighboring businesses remain free to profit from what they can lawfully see. Those considerations go well beyond the Cubs and Wrigley View Rooftop and into the broader relationship between property rights and commercial competition around sports facilities.