Ticket scalping is now illegal in Ontario
If you’ve been making money on the side scalping tickets to concerts and other live events, bad news. The Ford government wants to put you out of business.
As of this week, it will be illegal to sell any kind of ticket for more than face value. The new changes to the Ticket Sales Act have been passed. The new measures applies to both the “Who’s got tickets” guys outside of venues as well as online resellers.
Ticketmaster is okay with this, too. They’ve started contacting people selling tickets above face value on the company’s verified reseller sight warning them of the new law. (Ticketmaster had allowed a safe and secure way to resell tickets with the price set by the original purchasers.)
This also impacts companies like StubHub and other such resellers. Anyone convicted could face a fine of up to $10,000.
Fantastic, right? Well, sort of. At least in theory.
This should clear out the guys selling tickets outside of gigs, but I’m not sure how this will impact online resellers outside the borders of Ontario. Private resales will simply be driven further underground where the non-rules of the black market will apply.
Modern ticket scalping has been a problem for more than a 150 years. No one has been able to find a solution.
