Toronto Blue Jays fan Geoffrey Fulton poses with his Blue Jays gear and maple leaf bandana during Game 7 of the ALCS between the Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners in Toronto, on Monday.Rob Gillies/The Associated Press
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says his government will consider putting price caps on event tickets, after accusing Ticketmaster of “gouging” fans clamouring to see the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series.
Answering reporters’ questions at Queen’s Park on Wednesday, Mr. Ford said it was his opinion that the ticketing giant, owned by Live Nation, was “gouging the people.”
“When you have one player in the market that controls the tickets, that’s not right for the people,” he said. “I just don’t believe in one company, and that’s what’s happening right now with Ticketmaster in my opinion.”
It was Mr. Ford’s government that, in 2019, discarded new rules by Liberal lawmakers to regulate prices for events and concerts through the Ticket Sales Act that would have capped resale prices at 50 per cent above their face value.
Asked whether his government would bring back the previously scrapped legislation to cap tickets, Mr. Ford said his team had “talked about that.”
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Liam Maloney, a government spokesperson, later said in an e-mail statement to The Globe and Mail that the Tories are “looking to understand the potential issues around ticket sales and if the scope of that issue can only be solved by legislation.”
On the same day, Rob Cerjanec, MPP for Ajax and Ontario Liberal critic for tourism, port, and culture, tabled a motion to reinstate the scrapped policy.
The developments come as Canadians scramble to get their hands on tickets to see the Blue Jays play in the World Series for the first time in more than three decades.
Tickets to Game 1 of the Jays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers championship series, set for Friday in Toronto, sold out on Ticketmaster in about 30 minutes on Tuesday, with face-value 500-level seats going for around $500.
Seats quickly appeared on resale platforms such as StubHub, selling for upward of $1,000 for nosebleed seats as of Wednesday afternoon.
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Scalping was illegal in Ontario for many years before 2015, when the Liberal government loosened rules to let consumers resell tickets for more than face value, as long as they were confirmed as authentic or had a money-back guarantee. This helped legitimize and grow secondary markets such as StubHub.
Then, as digital scalpers and ticket-resale technology became more sophisticated, the Liberals announced sweeping consumer-protection reforms in 2017. In the shadow of the Rogers Centre – which on Friday will begin hosting the Blue Jays’ World Series run – then-attorney-general Yasir Naqvi promised to introduce measures, including transparency around service fees and total available tickets, plus new enforcement measures.
The cornerstone of the legislation was a cap on ticket resale prices of 50 per cent above their original face value. The promise was a populist one after years of built-up public anger over expensive resale tickets.
Mr. Naqvi said at the time that the government’s research found that 89 per cent of Ontarians wanted price caps, which would allow regular fans to resell tickets for a reasonable amount but would hold back speculation. Violators of the legislation could face five-figure fines or jail time.
Yet one of the first orders of business Mr. Ford’s government undertook after toppling the Ontario Liberals in 2018 was to “pause” the price caps just a week after they came into force – arguing that there was “no way to enforce” them. They officially scrapped the cap the next year.
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The move came after warnings from ticket-market executives, including from Ticketmaster and StubHub, that such regulation would be futile to enforce – and could push many tickets onto grey or black markets domiciled outside of Ontario with few consumer protections.
Experts are split on the efficacy of ticket caps. Pascal Courty, a cultural economics professor at the University of Victoria who has studied the sector, said caps are imperfect.
“The real solution is nominative tickets that can only be returned and refunded at face value,” he said. “Resellers cannot profit because a new buyer cannot access the venue if their ID does not match the ID on the ticket.”
However, Catherine Moore, an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto who studies the music business, points to signs of success with caps in Europe.
Tickets for comparable seats to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in the region, known for its more aggressive regulatory environment and laws capping how high tickets can be marked up over face value, often sold for hundreds of dollars cheaper than in North America.
With a report from Laura Stone