The New South Wales consumer watchdog has hit e-commerce giant eBay with $44,000 in fines after tickets for Sunday’s NRL grand final appeared on its platform in breach of the state’s ticket scalping laws.

This weekend’s “Battle of the West” between the Penrith Panthers and Parramatta Eels has kicked off fierce competition for tickets, prompting concerns of scalpers taking advantage of fans by re-selling tickets for the sold-out game online.

On Friday morning, the New South Wales Fair Trading confirmed it had delivered several infringement notices to eBay over scalpers acting improperly on the platform.

NSW Fair Trading Commissioner Natasha Mann said the regulator had issued 40 fines to eBay of $1,100 each, “for the offence of “Publishing a prohibited advertisement” in contravention of Fair Trading Act ‘ticket scalping’ regulation”.

“NSW Fair Trading is actively monitoring other platforms where grand final tickets may be re-sold and will take similar actions where tickets are being sold contrary to NSW laws,” she said.

In a statement, eBay Australia said the company was disappointed that Fair Trading had issued the company with fines “without providing an opportunity to work together in this instance”.

The e-commerce platform added it had worked quickly to remove 48 listings for Grand Final Tickets as of Friday morning. “Our team will continue monitoring and sweeping for items in the lead up to the NRL Grand Final,” an eBay spokesperson said.

EBay also pointed to its regulator portal, which lets Australian authorities, including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, to report and remove listings that breach the law.

When reported by an agency via this channel the listing is removed automatically without further approval by eBay.