Ontario Consults Concert Industry Over the Hip Ticket Scandal (And What About a Massive Free Concert at Downsview?)

Ontario Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur is trying to say the right things to people outraged by the recent tragically hip ticket fiasco. She says that her people are consulting and speaking with people in the ticketing industry about how to make things fair for consumers, specifically how we can do away with ticket-buying bots used by scalpers.

She told The Toronto Star “It’s complicated and it seems like technology always finds a way to go around it.” Gouging is bad, but “we can’t fix the price of tickets.” The Ontario government can’t pass any laws that would cap the price of a ticket beyond its face value.

Then there’s this. Last July, Ontario amended the Ticket Speculators Act. It now allows companies to resell tickets IF consumers are offered a money-back guarantee for guaranteed authentic tickets. Chances of repealing those amendments are slim.

What the Ticket Speculators Act doesn’t (and should) cover is the use of bots, the automated computer ticket buying programs that elbow humans aside and are capable of conducting hundreds of transactions a section. New York State–where people are pissed that they can’t get tickets to Hamilton and other hot Broadway shows–is looking at legislation that would make bots illegal. All in favour? I thought so.

[Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, has this to say about bots.]

Another thing New York is thinking of doing is cracking down on brokers who advertise that they can get tickets to anything. Once they have a client interested, they will then track down those tickets from somewhere and sell them at a price that includes a mark-up for their services.

[Here how some other acts try to battle scalpers.]

In Ontario, it’s perfectly okay for a broker to sell tickets that they do not yet possess. This is how tickets show up for sale on StubHub before they officially go on sale.  A show of hands of those who approve of making that illegal? Motion carries. Let’s see if the Ontario government has the stones to actually follow through on their talk.

Meanwhile, Toronto city councillor Josh Colle thinks that the best solution for the debacle is to throw a free concert at Downsview Park. From the Toronto Star:

Here’s a follow-up to the story in Metro.

Finally, The Beaverton has some fun with this whole issue with an article entitled “Tragically Hip cancels tour after band members unable to acquire tickets.”