Ontario’s new ticket resale rules were meant to protect fans. Some say they’re now losing money

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When Emily Gray had to back out of a James Blake concert in Toronto in June, she wasn’t set on making a profit reselling the tickets – she just wanted to get what she paid. But that has proven difficult through Ticketmaster since the introduction of Ontario’s new price cap rules.

The new law, which bans the resale of tickets above their original value, came into effect in April. And Ms. Gray was supportive of the change, which promised to level the playing field for fans.

“I figured that should be a good thing overall,” the 26-year-old said.

But when she tried listing the two tickets on Ticketmaster for the price she paid – a total of roughly $180 – the ticketing giant set a limit on the allowable resale price. To complete the listing, Ms. Gray was forced to lower the tickets to $162 for the two seats.

She took about a 10-per-cent loss – within the same range as the service fee Ticketmaster would traditionally charge to make a ticket sale on its website.

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While Ontario’s new ticket cap rules were meant to crack down on scalping and put fans on an equal footing, some say they’re losing money instead. Industry watchers say this may push more fans into unregulated markets.

“This gives a very strong incentive for people to exchange tickets outside the platform and outside the jurisdiction,” said Pascal Courty, a University of Victoria economics professor who studies events and ticketing.

Even before the rules came into effect, demand for popular events already propelled transactions into secondary markets on Kijiji and Facebook. On these types of platforms, sellers - and sometimes scammers - could extract more money from fans.

“The government can contact Facebook and say, ‘Look you have to follow law,’” said Prof. Courty. But outside Ontario’s jurisdiction, it’s hard to enforce. And the additional fees charged by verified vendors, he said, will push resellers to find workarounds.

That’s what happened to Prisha Puri. After realizing she couldn’t make it to a Bruno Mars concert in Toronto in May, the 23-year-old planned on listing her seats on Ticketmaster for the $118.13 she paid per ticket.

But Ticketmaster capped the sale price at $107.40 per ticket.

“All I want is to not lose money,” she said. She ended up posting to her TikTok account and asked her 22,000 followers if anyone wanted to buy her tickets.

In a statement, Ticketmaster spokesperson Shabnum Durrani said that seller fees are currently being waived for fans and season-ticket holders listing tickets through the platform.

However, “to quickly comply with Ontario’s new ticket resale caps,” the company introduced “temporary pricing limits,” she said, and as a result, “some tickets cannot currently be listed for the full original purchase cost.”

According to Ticketmaster, “the interim pricing limits are a temporary compliance measure to ensure no one lists a ticket above what they originally paid.”

It said it is working “on a long-term solution designed to allow fans to recover 100 per cent of what they paid.”

Though imperfect, centralized resale systems such as Ticketmaster and StubHub have traditionally provided important protections to fans reselling tickets, such as guaranteeing your ticket has been transferred safely, Prof. Courty said.

“What the law is doing is breaking that whole ecosystem,” he said.

The goal of the legislation was to make tickets “more affordable and accessible,” said Giulia Paikin, issues manager for the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, in an e-mail. The aim was to give fans a fairer chance to buy tickets, “rather than competing with automated systems that drive prices through the roof.”

Ontario’s new price cap rule frustrates season ticket holders looking to offset costs

StubHub, meanwhile, has not yet delisted resale tickets on its platform after Ontario introduced the new rules.

“Newly listed tickets comply with Bill 97 while we, and the entire industry, await further guidance,” said spokesperson Jack Sterne. According to the company, there hasn’t been enough guidance to determine how to approach seats listed before the rules came into effect.

There are also unanswered questions around how platforms can verify original ticket prices when primary sellers don’t share that information. Ticketmaster, which oversees roughly 80 per cent of major venues’ primary ticket sales in North America, is one of the few players with access to this information.

So far, Ms. Puri hasn’t found a buyer for her Bruno Mars tickets and says she may eventually have to sell through Ticketmaster as the concert dates approach.

“It just seems like this rule wasn’t really to benefit people, but more Ticketmaster,” she said.