Ford suspends price cap on ticket scalping
Law would have limited resale markups to 50% above face value
Newly installed Premier Doug Ford has suspended a key provision in a popular consumer protection law that was supposed to clamp down on skyrocketing ticket scalper prices.
Ontario’s anti-scalping law came into force on Canada Day and originally contained language capping the resale price of tickets at 50 per cent above face value. On Tuesday morning, a short, inconspicuous note on the Ontario laws website said the specific part of the law capping resale prices “comes into force on a day to be named by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor.”
When asked about the change, the premier’s office said it wanted to further review the resale cap and how it would be enforced.
“The previous government attempted to institute a cap on ticket resales with no way to enforce that cap, resulting in less consumer protection,” said Ford spokesperson Simon Jefferies in an email.
“We have paused the implementation of this section until we can review this provision in full to make sure it is in the best interest of Ontarians,” Jefferies wrote.
The markup cap suspension seemed to surprise the ticket industry.
When asked Tuesday about the law and its expected cap, StubHub said it hopes the government reconsiders.
Then, after being told about the suspension, StubHub issued a statement welcoming the change.
“StubHub is pleased that the recently elected Ontario government has taken appropriate steps to ensure ticket transactions continue to occur on platforms that provide vital consumer protections for fans of live events,” company spokesperson Cameron Papp said in a statement.
With the price cap on hold, ticket prices continue to soar.
A Star/CBC analysis shows that thousands of tickets to the city’s hottest concerts are being resold online for prices far above face value — in one case as high as 20,000 per cent.
These resale prices would have been illegal under the markup cap that was suspended by Ford’s new government.
An analysis of 10 popular, upcoming Toronto concerts — in- cluding Bruno Mars, Elton John, Radiohead and Taylor Swift — shows 20 per cent of tickets found Tuesday morning on websites StubHub, TicketMaster and SeatGeek exceeded a 50-per-cent markup.
A $69.50 ticket to Florence and the Machine was for resale on SeatGeek for $6,741.87 — a markup of 9,600 per cent.
A $221 ticket to Elton John was available on SeatGeek for $1,878, while a $95.50 Foo Fighters ticket was being offered on SeatGeek for $9,240.
A $325 ticket for Taylor Swift was being offered for $66,000 on StubHub — a 20,207-percent markup.
Aside from emailed statements from StubHub, and one from TicketMaster, the ticket reselling sites declined interviews for this story.
Richard Powers, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said scalpers will benefit from the suspension of the price cap.
“This looks to be an attempt by the new government to delay at least part of the new act, providing those in the secondary market a grace period or perhaps a total reprieve depending on what happens next,” Powers said.
Alan Cross, a radio DJ and music historian, questioned whether the cap ever would have worked.
“Scalping was completely ille- gal for the longest time, yet you could go outside any venue and find people buying and selling tickets,” he said.
There were 27,946 tickets available for the 10 concerts monitored on scalper websites. The Star and CBC identified 5,703 priced higher than 50 per cent above face value.
The more scarce the tickets, the higher the resale price. For Radiohead’s two shows at the Scotiabank Arena (formerly the ACC), there were only 410 tickets available on the four scalping websites monitored. But 308 of those tickets were marked up beyond 50 per cent.
Cross said even without the cap, the legislation still has some important achievements.
“There are some laudable things about the law: the effort to outlaw ticket-buying software, bots. That’s favourable. It’s a tough fight. It may be an unwinnable fight. But it’s a fight that has to be fought. That’s good.”
Powers agrees: “They have got rid of the bots. If the legislation accomplished anything, that was a real positive.”
TicketMaster’s website introduced several changes at midnight on Canada Day, the moment the new law came into force. For events in Ontario, TicketMaster’s verified resale tickets now list service fees up front and show buyers the face value of the ticket before they complete their purchase — both requirements of Ontario’s new legislation. StubHub doesn’t list the face value and declined to comment when asked by the Star and CBC.
“This is a very rational and prudent decision made by the new government,” said PattiAnne Tarlton, chief operating officer for TicketMaster Canada. “This pause will allow them time to effectively evaluate the anticipated impact of this component of the Bill and whether it will have the intended consumer protection the government and industry strive for.”
An ongoing investigation into the ticket resale market by the Star and CBC has revealed how mass scalpers use bots to buy up hundreds of tickets, which makes it far more difficult for fans to get them in the box office. Those scalpers feed tickets to the online resale market, where prices rise far above face value.
The world’s biggest online platform, StubHub, gives mass scalpers preferential treatment by providing them with automatic pricing tools and charging them lower fees than those charged to fans.
It’s all part of an ongoing revolution in the ticketing industry that blurs the line between the box office and scalpers, and pushing fans to pay even more.
In March, the Star and CBC reported the Toronto Blue Jays pocket secret commissions on every seat sold on StubHub — effectively profiting from the scalping of the club’s own seats. On opening day alone, more than 20,000 tickets — 45 per cent of the entire stadium — were posted for resale online. Data collection and analysis by the CBC’s William Wolfe-Wylie, Valérie Ouellet and Jessica Willms