Doug Ford is “putting ticket scalpers on notice”
A proposed change to the Ticket Sales Act would make it illegal to sell tickets for more than face value
Premier Doug Ford sure is doing a lot after announcing last week that documents from his office and the offices of his cabinet ministers would be exempt from Freedom of Information laws.
In a statement posted to social media today, Ford revealed his latest target: “We’re putting ticket scalpers on notice. Your days of ripping people off are done.”
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A media release explained Ford’s proposed changes to the Ticket Sales Act, which would make it illegal for tickets in Ontario to be re-sold for more than their original cost. This means that scalpers and online resellers would no longer be able to sell tickets to concerts and sporting events for more than they paid to get them.
(The Ticket Sales Act was introduced in 2017 by the former Liberal government.)
“We are taking action to help ensure Ontario fans have access to fair resale prices and are not exploited by price gouging when they buy resale tickets for their favourite events,” Stephen Crawford, minister of public and business service delivery and procurement, said in the release.
During the World Series last year, many Blue Jays fans were left disappointed when tickets sold out in minutes only to wind up astronomically priced on resale sites. That prompted Ford to reevaluate having scrapped a previous law that intended to cap ticket resales at 50 per cent above face value, which he said would be “unenforceable.”
“They’re gouging the people,” he said last October.
Ford’s resale radicalization could have come a lot sooner, but at least it’s just in time for baseball season.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
