Hundreds of tickets for Canada’s June 12 World Cup opener against Bosnia and Herzegovina are still up for sale at online reselling sites for more than ten times their original asking price — despite Ontario’s new anti-scalping law.
New amendments to the Ticket Sales Act make it illegal to resell tickets to any event in Ontario, including six Toronto games which are part of soccer’s global showcase, for more than their face value.
Monday evening, one pair of tickets with a face value of just over $3,000 a seat was listed at StubHub for $64,462 per seat. Another pair was going for $63,647. While those are a far cry from the $2 million a seat some prime tickets for the final in East Rutherford, N.J. are going for, it’s just the type of mark-up the amendments — which went into effect April 23 — were supposed to eliminate.
A spokesperson for Stephen Crawford, Ontario’s minister of public and business service delivery, said the new law aims to keep fans from getting gouged.
“We…have no tolerance for bad actors trying to overcharge families,” said Crawford spokesperson Giulia Paikin, who warned that companies who don’t take down listings for tickets priced above their face value could be fined up to $250,000.
Under questioning from NDP MPP Krisyn Wong-Tam in the Ontario legislature Monday, Crawford said the government is in touch with resale companies.
“Letters have been sent to all companies. We’ve been in discussions with every organization that is a reseller of tickets, and we will be continuing discussions with them and will be further enhancing enforcement in the very near future, if not in compliance.”
In a written statement, a spokesperson for StubHub said the company is keeping a close eye on new listings to make sure they don’t break the law.
“We…have implemented changes so newly-listed tickets comply with Bill 97 while we, and the entire industry, await further guidance,” said the StubHub spokesperson.
That “guidance” is coming in a technical briefing for the ticketing industry May 26 by staff from the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, according to a ministry letter obtained by the Star.
“If you, your members, and/or your clients have questions about business obligations related to the purchase of event tickets, Consumer Protection Ontario would like to offer the opportunity to provide an informational webinar,” the letter said.
At Seatgeek.com, the handful of tickets still being sold for Canada’s opener appeared to be much closer to their original prices, with the most expensive listed at $4,394, including a $3,765 for the ticket itself and a $628.92 “ticket fee.”
A Seatgeek executive blasted the new law, saying it will force eager fans to seek seats on social media or other sites which don’t guarantee tickets are legitimate, unlike major reselling sites like SeatGeek, Stubhub and Vivid Seats.
“Price controls on resale don’t lower what fans pay for World Cup tickets or any other event. What they do is push transactions off regulated platforms — like SeatGeek — to Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace, where there are no buyer protections and fraud rates are nearly four times higher,” said Joe Freeman, SeatGeek’s vice president of government affairs. “Fans don’t disappear when resale is restricted; they just lose their safety net.”
After the new law came into effect, FIFA removed Toronto games from its own resale site.
The changes caught the ticket resale industry off-guard, according to industry sources who said the Ontario government had invited companies to submit their comments on the proposed changes during a “consultation period” that wasn’t scheduled to close until May 10th. Instead, the changes to the Ticket Sales Act were passed April 23 as part of an omnibus budget bill.
If the pricey tickets do get taken down, however, that raises the risk of eager fans getting pushed to sites where they’re at risk of getting scammed, warned veteran Toronto Police Service detective David Coffey.
“One of the groups that will definitely benefit from this law, and it’s sad to say, will be the scammers because it will create more of a scarcity for the buyers. Whenever you have scarcity and high demand, that’s the feeding ground for the fraudsters,” said Coffey, who works for the Toronto Police Service’s financial crimes unit.
“You’re going to have buyers going to those illegitimate sites because there are going to be no other options, because there aren’t going to be any tickets for sale on the legitimate sites.”
For Coffey, the World Cup coming to town is a bit of deja vu from when Taylor Swift played six concerts of her Eras Tour in Toronto in 2024. Emotions, said Coffey, overcame judgment, and fans spent thousands of dollars on tickets that didn’t exist.
“We really didn’t know the extent of it until the day of the concert and people would show up to the stadium and suddenly be told ‘sorry, this ticket has already been scanned nine times. You’re out of luck,’” said Coffey.
In addition to keeping their emotions in check, fans should also be wary of claims that seem too good to be true when considering whether or not to buy tickets listed on social media or classified ad sites like Kijiji, Coffey added.
“You’re basically throwing your money into this big pot with the expectations that this person that you’re communicating with online, who you’ve never met, have no history with, that they’re going to be true to their word,” said Coffey. “You ultimately just have to be very suspicious.”
