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Ticketmaster has begun delisting resale tickets for Ontario events to comply with a new provincial law that caps the price of such tickets at face value.
The platform’s spokesperson Shabnum Durrani says customers will be able to relist their tickets next week when it will have updated its resale marketplace.
“We remain committed to creating a fair and secure ticket marketplace for everyone in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations,” Durrani said, adding that Ticketmaster has been notifying customers of the changes.
The move comes after the Ontario government passed its budget bill, which included the resale ticket price cap. The bill received royal assent on Friday.
The price cap follows consumer complaints about tickets to popular events, such as the last World Series and Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, being scooped up by resellers who posted them for several times their face value.
The Ford government is targeting ticket resellers, with plans to make it illegal to resell concert and event tickets for more than their original cost. CBC’s Lorenda Reddekopp breaks down what we know.
Amendments to the 2017 Ticket Sales Act were announced by the government last month and followed the premier’s vow last year to review legislation due to sky-high World Series resale tickets in Toronto.
That promise was a marked change in stance by Premier Doug Ford after his government scrapped part of an anti-scalping law in 2019 that would have capped ticket resale prices at 50 per cent above the original face value.
While tickets to FIFA World Cup events in Toronto this summer were expected to be exempt from the resale cap, a spokesperson for the minister of public and business service delivery and procurement said the cap would in fact apply to the sporting event as well.
“FIFA will be subject to the cap, no exemptions,” said Giulia Paikin, press secretary for Stephen Crawford.
StubHub, SeatGeek opposed change
A spokesperson for StubHub told CBC News that the resale platform intends to comply with the law — and is looking for more guidance from the province — despite its opposition to the cap.
“Price caps expose fans to a massive increase in ticket fraud, but don’t bring costs down. We will continue to work with Ontario through the implementation process and remind the Government that they were right when they found price caps ‘unenforceable’ just a few years ago,” a StubHub spokesperson said in an email.
SeatGeek, another resale platform that had opposed the cap, did not immediately reply to CBC News’s request for comment.
Proposed new laws in the U.K. would ban the resale of a ticket above face value. Advocates say it will level the playing field for fans, but resale companies say the move will fuel black markets.
When the Ford government first said in March it would cap resale prices, SeatGeek’s vice president of government affairs Joe Freeman said that would only make things worse for fans.
“When resale is artificially capped below market value, tickets migrate away from transparent, regulated platforms and into informal channels where consumers have no recourse if something goes wrong — fraud increases and fan protections disappear,” he said.
SeatGeek sent an email to some of its customers on Thursday, saying the change could impact fans’ ability to buy, sell and access live events. The email, viewed by CBC News, encouraged users to comment on the proposal on the Ontario government website, and asked them to take a survey about the resale cap, which they would share results of with the government.
