Overview
- Secondary-market listings for Toronto games have climbed into the thousands, with some upper-deck seats advertised around $2,500.
- Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government previously scrapped a 50% resale cap in 2019 and has now voted down opposition efforts to enact immediate protections.
- Premier Doug Ford said his team is developing options to address gouging but indicated any changes would come after the World Series.
- The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has sued Ticketmaster and Live Nation over alleged facilitation of reseller circumvention, while Ticketmaster says it has spent over US$1 billion fighting bots, is cracking down on multi-account resellers, and is shutting part of its TradeDesk platform.
- Experts and commentators note price caps and bot bans are hard to enforce and propose alternatives such as all-in pricing, disclosure of dynamic pricing, lotteries for fixed-price seats, Competition Bureau scrutiny, and limits on algorithmic pricing.