I want to be clear about something before I say anything else: I get it. I really do.
When Blue Jays fans were paying $16,000 for World Series tickets last fall, something was broken. When a family of four can’t afford to see their favourite artist without taking out a second mortgage on their summer, something is wrong. The frustration that drove Ontario Premier Doug Ford to this legislation is completely legitimate, and the instinct to protect fans from being gouged is one I share deeply.
I work in this industry. I’ve watched people get priced out of live music for years (original ticket price not included, that’s a whole other side). Nothing about what follows is a defence of scalpers.
But here’s where I find myself, quietly, honestly, trying to make sense of whether this new law actually helps the people it’s meant to help.
We’ve been here before.
In 2017, Ontario passed broadly similar legislation, capping resale at 50 per cent above face value. It felt like progress. It was celebrated. Then the Ford government shelved it in 2018, with their own spokesperson calling it “unenforceable.” Their words, not mine.
What’s changed since then to make a stricter version of that same law, a full face-value cap this time, suddenly workable? I’ve been looking for that answer and I haven’t found it yet. The internet is the same. The global platforms are the same. The scalpers operating from outside Ontario’s borders are the same. I’m genuinely asking, not rhetorically: what’s different now?
The part that worries me most is where the tickets go.
Capping prices on regulated platforms doesn’t make high-demand tickets less desirable. It just moves the transaction somewhere less safe.
When a Ticketmaster or StubHub resale listing has to be priced at face value, the economic incentive for those platforms to operate a secure, fraud-protected marketplace disappears. And when those regulated options shrink, the tickets don’t disappear. They show up on Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji, in DMs, in cash deals outside venues. Places with no buyer protection, no fraud guarantees, no recourse if the ticket turns out to be fake.
Richard Powers at the Rotman School of Business said it plainly: without a profit incentive, legitimate platforms will pull back, and that will push sales toward the unregulated market. StubHub said the same thing when the law was being debated, that price caps “expose fans to a massive increase in ticket fraud, but don’t bring costs down.”
I don’t love defending resale platforms. But a fan losing $300 to a scammer on Kijiji is a worse outcome than a fan paying $50 over face value on a platform with a money-back guarantee.
The fines aren’t built to actually deter anyone.
The law sets penalties of up to $10,000 for businesses that break the rules. I understand why that number is in there. But a professional broker clearing tens of thousands of dollars on a single FIFA World Cup match isn’t lying awake at night worrying about a $10,000 cap. And many of the platforms doing the selling are headquartered outside Ontario, which makes enforcement even more complicated.
Manitoba has had anti-scalping legislation for years. Quebec too. Both provinces will tell you enforcement has been difficult at best. Ontario hasn’t shown us the infrastructure that would make this work differently here.
The deeper issue this law doesn’t address.
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to. Scalpers are a symptom. The disease is primary market pricing.
Dynamic pricing. Platinum tickets. Surge pricing applied at the moment of the original sale, before a ticket ever reaches the secondary market. A ticket that starts at $400 on Ticketmaster didn’t get expensive because of scalpers. It got expensive at the source.
Ontario’s law caps what you can charge when you resell. It does nothing about what Ticketmaster charges you when you buy. And it’s worth noting, carefully, that Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, was among the first to publicly support this legislation. A company found last week by a U.S. jury to have illegally monopolized the live music industry came out in favour of a law that limits its competitors while leaving its own primary pricing untouched. That detail deserves more scrutiny than it’s gotten.
I still hope I’m wrong.
None of this means I’m rooting against the law. I’m rooting for fans. I’m rooting for the kid who’s been saving up to see their favourite artist and deserves to pay a fair price through a safe platform. That person is who this is supposed to be for. Not the bots. Not the insiders who can re-sell that ticket for three times the original price.
But wanting something to work and believing it will work are two different things. Ontario has tried versions of this before, walked it back, and is now trying again with higher stakes and the same unresolved questions about enforcement.
The government’s heart is in the right place. The music industry needs more protection for fans, not less. I just hope the mechanisms catch up to the intention, because right now, the gap between the two is where the scalpers live.