So how did the great seats for Beyonce end up on StubHub?

Some of the best seats for Beyonce Knowles's 37-city summer tour, including an Aug. 12 Boston show, are being auctioned on a website that caters to ticket scalpers.

Most of the tickets for the pop star's performance at the TD Banknorth Garden are on sale through Ticketmaster, which has an exclusive contract with the Garden to sell its tickets. But a small number of seats near the stage are up for auction at much higher prices on StubHub, the San Francisco-based online marketplace for ticket resellers. Officials connected with the Beyonce tour and StubHub declined to comment on the ticketing arrangement.

Music industry officials say tour revenue has become increasingly important as CD sales have declined in recent years. Some artists have tried selling tickets directly to the public, bypassing promoters, concert venues, and ticket companies, selling seats to the highest bidder.

Ticketmaster, the nation's domi nant ticketing firm, sued StubHub in April for interfering with Ticketmaster's exclusive contracts to sell tickets at many US concert venues. A Ticketmaster spokeswoman declined to comment on the Beyonce ticket situation.

In an interview last week, Mathew Knowles , Beyonce's father and manager, said he didn't know how concert tickets for his daughter's tour ended up on StubHub. Knowles said he would investigate, but since then has not returned phone calls.

The most expensive ticket currently available on Ticketmaster for Beyonce's concert at the Garden is a floor seat for $97.25, with Ticketmaster and the building tacking on extra fees of at least $13.95. Typically, a concert tour's promoter pockets a percentage of the face value of every ticket.

By contrast, StubHub is auctioning premium seats to the Garden show with initial bids starting at $250 to $300. Winning bidders will also receive special commemorative tickets and an autographed Beyonce photograph. The StubHub website, stubhub.com, says a percentage of the ticket sale price will benefit the Survivor Foundation, a Houston-based disaster-relief charity founded by Beyonce.

On a different section of the StubHub website, fans who have already purchased tickets to Beyonce's Boston show at the Garden are trying to resell them at prices ranging from $100 to $1,915.

StubHub is also auctioning Beyonce tickets on the website of its corporate parent, eBay Inc. Prices on eBay yesterday ranged from a low of $200 a seat for a show in Nashville to more than $400 for a seat in New York City.

John Vlautin , a spokesman for Live Nation Inc., the Los Angeles-based promoter of the Beyonce concert tour, said the StubHub tickets appear to have originally been put on hold for members of Beyonce's fan club. He said Live Nation was displeased the tickets had been diverted to StubHub, and stressed that Live Nation was not involved.

StubHub began soliciting business from concert artists last year after hiring Chuck LaVallee as director of music business development.

"StubHub is increasingly functioning as a valuable distribution channel for artists to sell more tickets and VIP packages while also creating artist-specific marketplaces that enable them to participate in overall secondary market revenue," the company said at the time.

A handful of acts, including Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hank Williams Jr. , have tried selling some of their best tickets through StubHub. Even though the number of tickets involved has been small, Ticketmaster has not taken the sales lightly.

In its lawsuit against StubHub, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Ticketmaster alleged that representatives working for Lynyrd Skynyrd and other artists told venues the tickets were being set aside for fan clubs, the artist's family, or for special promotions. Ticketmaster said the tickets were then posted on StubHub for sale to the general public.

Ticketmaster also alleged StubHub offered advertising or promotional fees to the artists in return for the tickets.

John Wentzell , president of the Boston office of Delaware North Cos., the owner of the TD Banknorth Garden and the Boston Bruins, said the StubHub ticket sales violate an exclusive ticketing arrangement his venue has with Ticketmaster.

Wentzell noted Ticketmaster can run the same type of ticket auction StubHub is running, and, in fact, has already auctioned a handful of Beyonce tickets.

"We were quite dismayed to see this has happened," Wentzell said. "We would never distribute tickets to StubHub. It runs totally contrary to the type of environment we try to create."

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.