Back in March we published a blog post discussing a proposal for the provincial government to regulate the secondary ticket market for sporting events, concerts, and other entertainment events. Now, the government is ready to introduce new legislation.

The new legislation introduced Thursday will ban the use or sale of tickets using bots and put a ceiling on what can be charged for resale tickets.

Tracy MacCharles, the minster of government and consumer services has said that they will "give the powers to ticket operators to sue bot companies," and that stronger enforcement and investigatory powers will be put in place.

The government also intends to have purchasers of resale tickets know what the final cost of their ticket will be, because of an issue that re-emerged after last year's Tragically Hip concert in Kingston, which saw tickets sell out in minutes and required almost all fans to go to online ticket resale websites to purchase tickets several times their face value.

What will come of this new bill is "fair and affordable access to entertainment," which is what Ontarians want. There was an online consultation that found an overwhelming amount of people want the bot software to be declared illegal.

There has been some support from certain online resale sites such as StubHub, which said it approves of the legislation – but does not agree with limiting resale prices. They believe "price caps displace tickets from secure sources, therefore exposing fans to higher instances of fraud, less transparency around fees, non-existent customer service and reduced ability for enforcement. [They] are concerned this policy reverses innovations in the market that serve to protect consumers."

Some highlights of the new legislation include:

  • Sellers must publicize how many tickets will be on sale, as well as the capacity of the venue
  • Resellers have to state the face value of the ticket, the resale price, as well as a "separately itemized list of applicable fees, service charges and taxes"

Ticket scalping (reselling tickets for above their face value) had always been illegal in Ontario. But that changed on July 1, 2015, when the Ticket Speculation Act came into force. The act, aimed at reducing fraud and creating greater consumers confidence in ticket purchasing, allowed re-sellers to make a profit as long as tickets were authenticated. But unfortunately that change opened the floodgates to the problem that the government is now trying to fix.

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