Ticket portals selling access to events despite cancellations

Live concerts are cancelled in most parts of the country for the foreseeable future, yet Ticketmaster and other Canadian ticket portals have continued to sell access to upcoming events that aren’t happening.

Several dozen concerts, including a DJ set with Andrew Rayel originally slated for Friday at Toronto’s Toybox Nightclub, were still available on Ticketweb, a portal owned by Ticketmaster, until after the company was contacted by The Canadian Press on Wednesday.

And concerts once booked throughout May at the PNE Forum in Vancouver were listed by non-profit retailer Ticketleader until the company responded to inquiries on why they were still up for sale.

Those PNE shows, which included a Kaytranada concert previously scheduled for May 9, have now been marked “postponed” by Ticketleader until an undetermined new date.

The lack of action by ticketsellers illustrates a divide between provincial bans of large public gatherings and how the concert industry is handing the fallout of COVID-19.

Several other events organized by Live Nation continued to be available for purchase on Ticketweb until Wednesday afternoon, including a May 2 concert with New York-based singer Margaret Glaspy at a Vancouver venue, and a May10 date in Toronto with French electronic act Hyphen Hyphen.

Other dates, including aperformance by Ivan & Alyosha, disappeared from Ticketweb on Wednesday.

Ticketmaster representatives provided a statement on behalf of its Ticketweb portal saying it operates a self-service platform for small clubs and independent promoters, who were among the small businesses affected by COVID-19 shutdowns. “Given the complexities of rescheduling event dates with resource-constrained staff and evolving information, these event organizers have needed more time to delist their events as they work tirelessly to make decisions that will ultimately affect their individual livelihoods,” the company said.