Just two days before Canada’s opening match at the World Cup in Toronto, two of the world’s biggest ticket reselling companies have been added to Ontario’s Consumer Beware List and potentially face thousands of dollars in fines under the province’s new anti-scalping law.
StubHub and SeatGeek were both added to the list Wednesday afternoon on the same day higher new “administrative” fines came into effect. The fines were raised from a maximum of $10,000 to a new top penalty of $25,000.
Neither StubHub nor SeatGeek immediately replied to a request for comment.
The list includes companies or individuals who have been charged under consumer protection laws, including the Ticket Sales Act, or who have ignored repeated inquiries from provincial consumer protection officials.
A spokesperson for Ontario’s minister of public and business service delivery Stephen Crawford said sellers breaking the law will be listed on the Consumer Beware List.
“Our government is taking action to protect families and ensure fans have a fair chance to buy tickets at reasonable prices by prohibiting the resale of tickets above face value,” said Crawford spokesperson Giulia Paikin. “We expect all sellers to comply with our provincial legislation and have no time for ticket gouging.”
At least a handful of tickets for Canada’s Friday afternoon opener against Bosnia and Herzegovina appeared to be breaking the anti-scalping law on resale sites Wednesday afternoon, although they were for far less than the $64,000 a ticket being asked two weeks ago.
A pair of seats apparently in Category 2, with a face value of roughly $2,200 per ticket, was listed at $5,219 per ticket on StubHub.
The Act was amended earlier this year to make it illegal for tickets to be sold for more than their face value, and included a maximum fine of $250,000 for court convictions under the Act.
The administrative fines announced last week, however, don’t require a court conviction, and can be issued more quickly and in a streamlined process sometimes likened to parking tickets.
In announcing the higher administrative fines last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the goal was to protect ordinary sports and music fans.
“We want the average person to be able to go to venues, sports venues, concerts without getting gouged,” Ford said.
Boston University economics professor Florian Ederer says that while the new legislation appears to have eliminated the most eye-popping prices on resale websites, it’s still too early to tell if it’s been entirely successful.
“It is unclear whether it has truly increased consumer surplus,” said Ederer, whose research focuses on competition and antitrust policy, but who has also done extensive research into sports ticket sales.
By cutting down the potential profits to resellers, fewer of them are likely to snap up tickets in the first place, meaning in theory that there should be more tickets to go around for ordinary fans, Ederer said.
“It’s not just about bringing ticket prices down in the secondary market,” Ederer said. “It’s also about ‘is it more likely that now I can buy actually in the primary market as a fan?’.”
Still, Ederer argued, by eliminating the profit incentive for resellers, that can give “primary” ticket sellers, including FIFA, more of an incentive to keep prices high, because there’s less risk they’d be undercut on the secondary market.
“Do we care about the relative profit distribution between resellers and the monopolist? Well it depends on who we think is more deserving and that’s a tricky question,” said Ederer.
With files from Rob Ferguson
