Ontario is cracking down on scalpers, but is it enough?

Last Thursday, the Ontario government passed new legislation making it illegal to resell tickets to concerts and sporting events above their original face value.

With ticket prices having reached extreme heights for events like the Blue Jays’ World Series run and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, the Ontario government is looking to clamp down on the lucrative resale market.

In Ford’s words: “We’re putting ticket scalpers on notice. Your days of ripping off people are done.” 

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud is joined by music journalist Richard Trapunski and public policy expert Vass Bednar to hear why this legislation is happening now, and what it means for the ticket buying experience going forward.

We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

WATCH | Today’s episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Let’s ground ourselves in some history first. This is not the first time that Ontario lawmakers have said, “You know what, the thing we’re going to do is [that] we’re going target the ticket resale industry.”

How do we go from Premier Ford kiboshing anti-scalping legislation 2018 to actually saying, “You know what, we’re going to embrace it now”?

Vass: Well, you’re seeing some pretty clear anti-monopoly language. So this intervention in the monopoly market structure and landscape is pretty minor and pretty downstream. 

But in terms of things that have changed since 2018: one, we’re in a pretty acute cost of living crisis; two, ticket prices have escalated [and are] subject to more dynamism and shifts than ever before;and three, just this kind of cultural profiteering; the normalization of resale in our everyday lives digitization. To go from that language —  “we’re putting ticket scalpers on notice” — almost feels like we’re trying to do in the digital world what we had already legislated [on] the sidewalk.

Elamin: Let’s also trace the ways that Ticketmaster itself has behaved differently. So back in 2018, they came out in favor of Ford killing that anti-scalping legislation. [Now,] they’ve pretty quickly complied with this new law. They’ve delisted all resale tickets; they’ve instructed sellers to repost their tickets at face value. What do you make of that? 

Vass: Well, first of all, it’s completely mind-blowing that an American-owned, mostly digital firm, is rushing to comply with a state-level law that Canada makes. And I don’t want Trump to post on Truth Social about this, but it’s kind of the way we expect regulations to work, right? Rules for markets to be set democratically and then companies to comply with them. 

But in terms of what’s changed for Ticketmaster, I think [that there has been] a really profound backlash [with] more awareness of their junk fees. And from the antitrust case you and I have discussed previously on the show, there was evidence of Ticketmaster executives bragging about basically extorting people and jacking up those fees when it comes to their tickets. So I think public opinion really changed. And frankly, we need companies to comply, right? 

So it was probably Ticketmaster and their lobbyists whispering in the premier’s ear at this time that compliance will be difficult, it’s going to be really tricky to enforce. And now we’re seeing cooperation when it comes to compliance. 

Last thing I’ll just say is that regulatory compliance can be a competitive advantage too. When you’re the largest company and can invest in what you need to do to comply, this could also be something that starts to not extinguish, but challenge their competitors who are more reliant on the resale market than Ticketmaster. 

Elamin: A spokesperson for SeatGeek told CBC News that this is not going to lower ticket prices, and it’s just going to push tickets to be resold on places like Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace where there is a way higher chance of fraud. Do they have a point when they say that?  

Richard: In a way, yes. It’s interesting because SeatGeek and StubHub are essentially villainizing that other secondary market — Kijiji [and] Facebook — and that’s the same thing that Ticketmaster is doing to StubHub and SeatGeek. They’re all kind of saying, “You can’t trust them, but you can trust us. These are going to be real tickets, they’re verified.”

There’s a practice called speculative ticketing that exists out there. We saw it a lot for big ticket concerts like Oasis last summer at Rogers Stadium, where tickets were already being listed on secondary marketplaces before [they] were even on sale. So that’s one of the things that Ticketmaster actually was getting the word out and warning people about. But I think to Vass’s point, Ticketmaster controls so much of the market that in a certain way, they’re kind of setting the ticket price as well. We can get into dynamic pricing, which is another big element of how ticket prices work and how tickets are sold. 

I think back in the day, you might go line up at a record shop and buy your ticket. And you’re saying, “I’m going to go buy my ticket for a hundred dollars.” Now, the ticket price is different depending on what day you look. It’s based on supply and demand, and there’s all sorts of ways that they measure that. It’s minute-by-minute, but also before the tickets [even] go on sale. Things like artist presales are gauging demand for the show, and that’s going to be built into the ticket price. 

So if you can no longer resell a ticket for more than the [original] price, what is the price that you bought it at? It might still be a thousand bucks, [or] five thousand bucks for a Taylor Swift show. 

You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.