The Great War over Concert Tickets: Regulating Ticketmaster in Canada

Over the past decade, consumers have complained about the increasingly aggressive marketing practices of ticket sales and distribution companies like Ticketmaster. These practices have worsened the ticket-buying experience for concertgoers in Canada.  

A recent example occurred in the fall of 2024 when singer-songwriter Taylor Swift ended her record-breaking Eras Tour with nine shows in Canada. News outlets nationwide sparked public outrage by reporting stories of fans’ difficult ticket-buying experiences that left many without tickets or forced to pay exorbitant resale prices on sites like StubHub. This example is nothing new; it reveals how Ticketmaster operates in a high-demand industry without competition. Canada’s weak regulatory framework governing the live entertainment industry enables Ticketmaster’s aggressive marketing practices. However, policymakers have a clear path to reforming this highly fraught industry by learning from other jurisdictions worldwide and prioritizing transparency. 

A Lack of Strong Laws and Regulations 

Canada’s live entertainment industry lacks strong laws and regulations, enabling Ticketmaster to dominate the ticketing landscape. The Eras Tour highlighted three major underregulated issues: dynamic pricing, ticket scalping, and drip pricing. 

Businesses engage in dynamic pricing by increasing prices when the demand for the goods they sell is high. Ticketmaster explains that dynamic pricing allows “artists and other people involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true market value.” Nevertheless, Ticketmaster’s reliance on market conditions to vary ticket prices results in unfairness for consumers. In a letter from Brian Masse, the former NDP critic for innovation, science and industry, to the former Minister, François-Phillipe Champagne, Mr. Masse states, “the arrival of Taylor Swift’s popular ‘Eras Tour’ concerts in Canada has highlighted your government’s failure to take on price gouging in the ticketing and live entertainment industry.” 

Dynamic pricing goes hand in hand with the second issue: scalping or the operation of a secondary resale market. The absence of strong laws and regulations enables bots and scalpers to acquire most high-demand tickets. They then resell these tickets for multiple times their face value on second-hand sites. These expensive resales benefit neither artists nor concertgoers. In the case of the Eras Tour, Ticketmaster was ill-prepared for such a high-demand sale; it permitted bots and scalpers to enter and bulk-buy tickets, pushing many tickets and fans to secondary resale markets where the scalpers could drive up prices.  

Most of Ticketmaster’s revenue comes from drip pricing, the “service fees” hidden behind advertised ticket prices on their website. Drip pricing is key to Ticketmaster’s business model and is legal in Canada. Often, these hidden fees only become visible to customers at checkout when their only options are to purchase or cancel the sale. In 2019, the Competition Bureau investigated Ticketmaster for “misleading pricing in online ticket sales,” eventually ordering them to pay $4.5 million. However, the company is unlikely to abandon this practice unless the law explicitly outlaws it and provides enforceable penalties. 

Consumer protection legislation exists at the federal and provincial levels, but its efficacy is debatable. As an independent law enforcement agency, the Competition Bureau enforces the Competition Act, which is supposed to prevent “anti-competitive practices in the marketplace, such as price fixing and misleading advertising.” The Bureau has limited resources to investigate every case. In addition, the federal government has recognized the need to modernize the Act. For example, the Act does not explicitly address dynamic pricing or ticket scalping. There is also a lack of collaboration between the federal and provincial governments in regulating unfair business practices, even though consumer protection is an area of shared jurisdiction. Currently, Quebec is the only jurisdiction in Canada where the province’s law requires Ticketmaster to “include all non-optional fees in its prices” and practice “all-inclusive pricing” under section 224 of Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act (CPA).  

A lack of competition stifles economic growth, raises prices and reduces innovation. This is the environment in which Ticketmaster operates in Canada today, worsened by its merger with Live Nation. In 2010, Ticketmaster, North America’s biggest ticket distributor, and Live Nation, North America’s biggest venue operator, joined to form Live Nation Entertainment. This merger stifled competition by making it harder for smaller players to succeed in the market. For instance, AEG, the official Eras Tour promoter, claimed that “Ticketmaster’s exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on the ‘Eras’ tour required [them] to ticket through their system,” contributing to disastrous ticket-buying experiences for fans. 

A Path Forward 

Canada must strengthen the legal and regulatory framework governing its live entertainment industry. This includes ensuring penalties accompany clear prohibitions, and equipping the Competition Bureau with the resources to investigate unfair business practices. In making these changes, prioritizing transparency is key to creating a more equitable industry that protects consumers.  

Canada has much to learn from other jurisdictions worldwide in creating and amending federal and provincial legislation to address dynamic pricing, ticket scalping, and drip pricing. Denmark, Portugal, and Ireland have made reselling tickets above face value illegal. Such a law disincentivizes scalpers, as scalpers only make money by selling tickets in large volumes at many times their face value, thus eliminating the inequitable resale market. Making this practice illegal also makes fans likelier to get live event tickets than bots or scalpers.  

Canada’s live entertainment industry needs transparency. The ticket resale market is almost impossible to regulate. Therefore, legislators and policymakers should focus on the official market and require Ticketmaster to adopt equitable marketing practices. Ensuring ticketing sites face enforceable penalties for breaking the law is key. For instance, France only allows ticket resellers to sell tickets on “authorized ticket platforms.” The fine for breaking France’s law is €15 000, which is a significant deterrent for resellers.  

Finally, strengthening the Competition Bureau is key to creating the public perception that this independent law enforcement agency is serious about cracking down on aggressive marketing practices. Ensuring the Bureau has the resources to conduct investigations is crucial to increasing pricing transparency, for example.  

Only legislative reform and strengthened enforcement mechanisms will stop resellers and scalpers and make the industry safer and more transparent for consumers.

The opinion is the author's, and does not necessarily reflect CIPPIC's policy position