Today, the Ontario government proposed a price cap on ticket reselling. In response, Brian Berry, Executive Director of the Ticket Policy Forum, released the following statement:
“This terribly flawed proposal will reduce access to tickets for popular events on reliable platforms that come with guarantees and protections, fuel fraud and scams on social media sites, and empower Ticketmaster and box offices to increase prices without any oversight. Make no mistake: under this proposal, ticket prices will continue to rise and scams will increase. It’s no surprise Ticketmaster, whose executives bragged about ‘gouging’ fans and ‘robbing them blind,’ supports these policies. If Ticketmaster is for price caps, any politician who cares about their constituents must oppose them.”
Concerns with the proposal include:
- Glaring loophole for Ticketmaster. The proposal only applies to reselling tickets. That means primary sellers like Ticketmaster are exempt, allowing them to raise prices and use dynamic pricing unchecked — all of this for a company whose executives said they “almost feel bad” about “gouging” fans and “robbing them blind.”
- Drives transactions underground. Price caps push sellers off regulated marketplaces and onto social media and informal channels, which have no consumer protections and law enforcement has no visibility. Independent studies show ticket fraud is 4x higher in areas with price caps.
- Unenforceable by design. The policy provides no mechanism to compel Ticketmaster or box offices to share the original purchase price of a ticket with resale platforms. Without that data, marketplaces have no reliable way to determine what a seller paid — making it impossible to enforce these price caps.
- Built on a false premise. Legislating around high-demand outlier events — like World Series games or Taylor Swift concerts — is poor public policy. The overwhelming majority of events do not sell out, and consumers already have abundant options at accessible prices through both primary and secondary markets. In fact, tickets on secondary markets are often less expensive.