TICKETS HAVE A NEW MASTER
New rules on bots, scalping this fall
VICTORIA B.C. will follow the lead of other provinces by introducing legislation this fall targeting scalpers and bots that snatch up tickets to live events and gouge customers by reselling them for exorbitant prices.
Solicitor General Mike Farnworth said Tuesday that the goal of the law is to “deal with the issue of the ability of British Columbians to access tickets and what they see as the unfair way that scalpers get the tickets, bots get the tickets. It seems like anybody other than an ordinary British Columbian gets the tickets.”
The government will conduct a three-week public consultation designed to get input from frustrated customers and the ticketselling industry.
“They will have ideas. The industry will have ideas. There’s a whole range of other issues besides bots,” Farnworth said.
“For example, in a 50,000-seat arena, people think there are 50,000 tickets. When you start to take out things such as tickets being held back by the promoter, tickets that are held back by fan clubs, for example, that reduces the number of tickets and there are issues there. There’s a lot to look at in terms of either we can change or improve besides just the bots that will result in legislation that works for people here in B.C.”
Public outrage surfaced in 2016 when the Tragically Hip’s farewell tour sold out virtually instantly across Canada, with scalpers and brokers reselling tickets at inflated prices. In Vancouver, a $160 ticket was listed on third-party sites like StubHub for as much as $6,000.
Live Nation admitted two-thirds of tickets for the tour were bought by brokers and bots, according to a CBC Marketplace investigation.
Concerns were raised again last year when a Vancouver show by the pop artist Pink sold out within seconds and were offered online for more than $1,000.
B.C. has faced pressure to enact regulations to protect consumers from the unfair automated purchasing of concert, sports and other event tickets for the purposes of reselling them at inflated prices.
Farnworth defended consulting, rather than taking immediate action, saying public consultation works and if the government didn’t listen first it would be criticized.
A 2017 survey by Angus Reid found 81 per cent of Canadians would support making bot use illegal and for offenders to be punished with fines or jail time. Twenty-three per cent of respondents said they had used the secondary market — a ticket resale service like SeatGeek or StubHub — and 60 per cent said its prices were unreasonable. Seventy-seven per cent said they would support a legal cap on resale prices if bots aren’t banned.
Farnworth said some sort of limitation on bots makes sense, but admitted enforcement could be difficult since bot users could be outside B.C.’s jurisdiction. He said the province needs to investigate how other provinces and countries are handling that issue.
“We want to learn from the successes, as well as the failures, of other jurisdictions,” he said.
Ontario passed a law in December banning bots with a new Ticket Sales Act that capped resale prices to a 50 per cent increase over face values. Alberta introduced a bill in November requiring primary ticket-sellers like Ticketmaster to do due diligence on bots and cancel any tickets bought by such means, under penalty of a $300,000 fine or two years in jail. The bill requires secondary sellers to provide a full refund if an event is cancelled before a ticket is used, the ticket is cancelled or counterfeit, or doesn’t match the description.
Ticketmaster stopped roughly five billion bots in 2016 through pattern recognition and other methods while “spending millions in dollars and blood” to do so, said David Marcus, Ticketmaster’s executive vice-president and head of music. The company saw multiples of that number in 2017, he said.
The firm recently introduced a technology that requires fans to register their interest in an event. Ticketmaster’s machine learning analyzes each customer to see who is most likely to attend based on how many times they have followed through on events in the past. Those selected receive a code and specified purchase window, rather than having to participate in one general on-sale time.
The technology was used on 65 tours in 2017 and Ticketmaster found the technology was right in selecting fans 95 per cent of the time, meaning those people used the tickets instead of reselling them.
We want to learn from the successes, as well as the failures, of other jurisdictions.