Canada's Richie Laryea, right, plays defence in a March 31 international friendly against Tunisia in Toronto, which will host six World Cup matches this summer. Despite new Ontario legislation, StubHub had yet to delist resale tickets on Friday afternoon to a wide range of live events.Cole Burston/Reuters
StubHub has not yet delisted resale tickets on its platform after Ontario introduced new legislation Friday capping the resale of event tickets above the original price.
According to the company, there was simply not enough guidance to make a move yet.
In an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, StubHub’s head of policy communications, Jack Sterne, said the company “will continue to work with Ontario through the implementation process.”
As of Friday, resale tickets on the platform were still available for above the original price for events ranging from performances by South Korean pop band BTS at Toronto’s Rogers Stadium in August to a FIFA World Cup match between Canada and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the city’s BMO Field in June.
Asked whether StubHub has a plan for once the new rules are in place, the company cited the need for more clarity on what the rules and regulations are to answer that question.
Giulia Paikin, press secretary and issues manager for Ontario’s Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, said the new rules under the provincial Ticket Sales Act are effective “immediately” and apply to all resale platforms across the province.
“We expect all ticket resale companies operating in the province to comply,” she wrote in an e-mail. Businesses that do not comply will face enforcement action and significant fines, she added, with penalties for corporations starting at $3,000 and reaching up to $250,000 for continued non‑compliance, “including failing to delist tickets priced above the legal limit.”
Opinion: Turns out the waiting line for World Cup tickets was the real group of death
Ticketmaster, meanwhile, announced it was delisting resale tickets after the royal assent of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s budget bill early Friday, which included amendments to the Ticket Sales Act that would cap ticket resale prices along with stronger guidelines for sellers to prove the total price of the ticket when it was purchased.
The move is a major pivot on a previous decision by Mr. Ford’s Progressive Conservative government to scrap a Liberal-initiated price cap in 2018. Those rules would have limited resale prices at 50 per cent above tickets’ original face value.
StubHub’s Mr. Sterne said the Ford government was “right when they found price caps ‘unenforceable’” a few years ago. “This price cap helps the Ticketmaster monopoly, allowing them to consolidate power and raise prices on Ontario’s fans.”
Ticketmaster spokesperson Shabnum Durrani said in an e-mail the company supports Ontario’s new legislation as “an important step toward creating a more transparent resale market for fans.”
The company has started notifying resellers that their tickets were delisted from the marketplace, according to Ms. Durrani. Customers can relist their tickets next week once the resale marketplace has been updated in compliance with the new rules.
With less than two months until the FIFA World Cup is co-hosted in Toronto, ticket prices are top of mind for many.
No resale tickets for the FIFA World Cup matches being played in Canada were available to Ontario-based Ticketmaster users on Friday afternoon.Ticketmaster
As of Friday afternoon, there were no resale seats for FIFA games in Canada on Ticketmaster when searching in Ontario. StubHub still had hundreds of seats available for games in Toronto, starting at about $1,600.
World Cup games are not exempt from Ontario’s new rules, Ms. Paikin said.
StubHub continued to list hundreds of resale tickets for Canada's World Cup tournament opener on Friday afternoon.StubHub
Mr. Ford began publicly mulling a ticket price cap last fall as the Toronto Blue Jays pushed the Los Angeles Dodgers to a seven-game World Series that saw the price of nosebleed seats surge into the thousands.
“When you have one player in the market that controls the tickets, that’s not right for the people,” he said at the time. “I just don’t believe in one company, and that’s what’s happening right now with Ticketmaster in my opinion.”
The price cap would apply to resellers on any platform, including Ticketmaster, StubHub and SeatGeek.
But while ticketing platforms have historically argued that capping resale prices would push resellers to the black market, where regulations and consumer protections wouldn’t be enforced at all, some companies have changed their tune.
Ticketmaster and its parent Live Nation have recently come to embrace price caps, which some experts have argued can reduce competition to their benefit. The U.S. Justice Department last month said it would settle its antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which drew scrutiny from dozens of states that plan to keep challenging the companies’ market power in court.