Ticketmaster has responded to the recent uproar about the exorbitant price of Blue Jays World Series tickets, telling CityNews in a statement that it doesn’t “set or control” ticket prices, “especially not the resale prices.”
The response comes after Premier Doug Ford lashed out at the company on Wednesday, accusing it of “gouging” the public and holding a monopoly over the coveted tickets.
“My personal opinion … they’re gouging the people,” Ford said at Queen’s Park.
“When you have one player in the market that controls the tickets, that’s not right for the people, so we are actually reviewing that right now.”
Ticketmaster spokesperson Natasha Boeck stressed that ticket prices on the resale market “are set by individual sellers, many of which are professional ticket resellers looking to sell at the highest prices the market will bear.”
Boeck blamed “scalpers” for the current situation, and says the company is “investing in new technologies to fight the scalper bots used to cheat fans” adding that Ticketmaster supports resale reform.
Boeck added that Ticketmaster’s resale marketplace “is verified and authenticated, so fans can be confident they’re getting a real ticket and a secure way to see live events.”
“Providing a safe, verified platform is at the core of what Ticketmaster does,” she said.
Ford, meanwhile, hinted that his government could introduce legislation to tackle resale prices — even though it was his government in 2019 that scrapped part of a law that would have capped ticket resale prices at 50 per cent above the original face value.
The ticket-capping plan was brought in by the previous Liberal government, but it was scrapped shortly after Ford was elected.
At the time, the Ford government said the rule was unenforceable and would have driven consumers to buy tickets on the black market, further spiking prices.
Despite that, Ford is now championing change.
“I just don’t believe in one company controlling everything, and that’s what’s happening right now with Ticketmaster in my opinion,” he said Wednesday.
Opposition parties have also joined the call for reform on resale prices.
Single-game World Series tickets went on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. Tuesday. As expected, they quickly sold out and resale prices soared into the thousands of dollars, with potential Game 7 tickets surpassing $10,000.
Meanwhile, some fans continue to air their grievances surrounding the skyrocketing prices.
One fan living with a disability told CityNews he was shocked to see that prices for wheelchair accessible seats were also in the thousands of dollars.
Ryan Healey-Ogden said he has “grave concerns” over access to disabled seating for the World Series.
“After waiting over an hour on Ticketmaster … I was met with only verified resale tickets available,” the 44-year-old wrote. “After filtering for the accessible tickets that I require, I was shocked to see the price of over $8,000 per ticket.”
Healey-Ogden shared a screengrab of the ticket below.
“You allow people to scalp disabled tickets for $8,000 each?” he asked. “This is outrageous.”
“Shouldn’t there be some control over who buys disabled tickets? Just make them final sale and not available to resale,” he suggested.
“Being disabled typically means you are unable to earn at the same rate as others, so again, it is shocking that this is allowed to happen.”
Healey-Ogden said he reached out to Ticketmaster to share his concerns and was told that the company would be reviewing the pricing structure for accessible seating.
