A welcome crackdown
It was supposed to be an event that united the country, a national mourning for one of Canada’s most beloved bands.
But last summer’s Tragically Hip farewell tour prompted not only an outpouring of love for front-man Gord Downie, who is suffering from terminal brain cancer. It also sparked widespread anger at the technology that was preventing fans from obtaining tickets to celebrate his life and art.
The rage was justified. After the tour it was revealed that within minutes of going on sale, about 60 per cent of the Hip tickets were listed as sold. They had been snapped up en masse for resale by automated software systems known as scalper bots. Fifty-dollar tickets disappeared from Ticketmaster sites only to reappear on reseller sites such as StubHub for as much as $5,000.
It’s an access issue that has long been decried by entertainment and sporting fans. But it took the Hip’s tour to galvanize the government into action.
On Monday Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi announced he will introduce legislation this fall that will both curb the excesses of the ticket reselling business and make the process more transparent.
The government is right to start by cracking down on bots. According to Naqvi, the legislation will make it illegal “to sell bots, use bots or use tickets sold by bots.” And the government will introduce fines and jail time to ensure the rules are followed.
The law will also cap the resale price of tickets at 50 per cent above face value. And it will wisely require ticket sellers to disclose the number of seats up for sale as well as the total capacity of the venue.
That last step will bring a welcome element of transparency to a ticket-selling process that has long been troublingly opaque. A New York-based study of the issue found in some cases barely half the tickets to an event are actually ever available for sale. The rest are given to insiders or reserved for more lucrative pre-sales. Shining a spotlight on that practice, the government believes, will help end it.
These are good first steps. But if Queen’s Park is to succeed in its consumer-protection efforts, entertainers and event promoters must get on side, too.
Some artists are already experimenting with ways to ensure their fans get a fair chance to buy tickets. Adele, for example, has her team monitor online ticket sales for suspicious purchases, such as big batches from the same IP address. Other musicians circumvent bots by requiring fans to present the credit card they bought the ticket with at the door. Still others are pressuring promoters to scrap the kinds of price-inflating practices exposed by the New York study.
In the meantime, the government has taken important steps to fight predatory scalpers. The province is right that the joys of sport and culture should not be the exclusive domain of the rich.
Ontario will introduce legislation to ensure fans have fair access to concerts and other events