Act on ticket scalping

It’s no surprise last week’s explosive Toronto Star/CBC investigation that revealed Ticketmaster secretly and actively recruiting scalpers to resell its tickets at inflated prices has caused a political backlash in the U.S.

What is a surprise is that there has been nary a whimper about it in Canada. If the federal Competition Bureau or politicians in Ottawa are concerned about these objectionable price-raising practices they haven’t yet said so.

Indeed, when pressed by the CBC on Tuesday — a week after the revelations — federal Industry Minister Navdeep Bains would only say that the government was looking into it to determine “appropriate next steps.” He shouldn’t dilly-dally. Canadian consumers deserve the same swift action from politicians as American ticket purchasers are getting.

There, U.S. Sens. Jerry Moran and Richard Blumenthal, in their role as members of a subcommittee on consumer protection, are already demanding answers to pointed questions.

“The allegations of the harms to consumers made in this piece are serious and deserve immediate attention,” the two wrote in a letter to Michael Rapino, the CEO of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation. “Given our ongoing interest in protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive practices, we seek clarification on the use of this program.”

The Ticketmaster web-based software program they are referring to is called Trade Desk. It empowers scalpers to manage large inventories of seats obtained from Ticketmaster.com and resell them at inflated prices with commissions going to the scalpers — and Ticketmaster itself.

And Ontario’s provincial government doesn’t seem particularly concerned about this ticket scalping practice either.

In July, it delayed implementation of a facet of a Wynne-era consumer protection law that would have capped the resale price of tickets to 50 per cent above face value. With the cap on hold, a Star investigation showed ticket prices continued to soar well above that rate — and in one case to as high as 20,000 per cent above face value with a $325 ticket for a Taylor Swift concert being offered for $66,000.

When regular-priced tickets disappear within minutes of appearing on Ticketmaster’s site only to reappear for vastly inflated prices on reseller sites, the system seems well and truly broken. It’s high time Canadian ticket purchasers received protection from these wallet-gouging practices.

If U.S. politicians can prioritize it, there is no reason Canadian politicians can’t.