Ontario’s admirable, honourable, and doomed plan to cap the resale price of concert tickets
The government of Doug Ford’s latest PR stunt is the imposition of a cap on the resale price of concert tickets. The official press release says that “New changes will cap ticket resale prices at original cost to protect consumers from professional resellers and unfair prices.”
The new rules would apply not just to concerts, but also sports, theatre–any ticketed live event.
This is an update to a similar 2017 law–the Ticket Sales Act–that the Ford government got rid of, saying that it didn’t work.
Lovely. Good luck with that.
As other territories around the world have experienced, laws like this extend beyond local borders because, you know, the internet.
While this will affect companies like StubHub, which have offices in Ontario, it will have zero effect on resellers based outside of Ontario. Bots and other methods of gobbling up tickets roam the entire universe. So if you’re buying your resale ticket from an office in New York or a company routing its operations through servers in Eastern Europe, what’s Ontario going to do? Write a stern warning email?
Live Nation thinks this is a good idea–and on paper, it does look good.
The only way something like this could work is if every territory and country banded together to fight tight scalping with sales caps. The UK is thinking about imposing a cap, and there are several US states with similar legislation, but that’s a drop in the ocean.
High-demand tickets are always going to find their way to resellers who jack up the price to exorbitant amounts. And there will always be people with money willing to pay whatever price, no matter where the ticket seller may have hung their shingle.
Cheaper concert tickets as a result? Dream on.
