Ontario ticket resellers still not complying with price-cap law despite rising penalty threat

Ontario's new law banning ticket resale above face value has gone largely unenforced, with major resale platforms admitting non-compliance even as the province raised potential penalties to $25,000 and threatened court-ordered fines up to $250,000 for corporations.

The law came into effect in April, well before Toronto hosted six World Cup matches this month. As the last of those matches wrapped Thursday, StubHub, SeatGeek, and Vivid Seats all acknowledged they are not in full compliance with the new rules.

Yet as of Friday, the province had not fined any of the violators, according to a government consumer-beware website. A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford said that non-compliant businesses on the government's list that don't take action to comply will face a fine, with the timeline being simply "no compliance = a fine."

The platforms cited confusion about how to verify original ticket prices. StubHub said it has unresolved issues about what level of proof sellers should provide. SeatGeek said it's still working to understand its compliance obligations. Vivid Seats said it had remedied nearly all identified non-compliance areas and expects to be fully compliant this month.

David Clement, policy director at the Consumer Choice Centre, called the law "mostly just a symbolic piece of legislation," noting it is "unmanageable, it's unenforceable and it is very difficult" to implement. The difficulty stems from the fact that resale websites cannot easily determine a ticket's original face value since it was typically sold through another platform. While Ticketmaster says every receipt lists what customers paid, documentation can be altered, creating verification problems for resale sites.