The Ford government just made it illegal to resell concert and sports tickets above face value. So why are experts saying prices could go up?
If you’ve ever watched a ticket for a Blue Jays game or a sold-out concert disappear in seconds — only to reappear on StubHub for four times the price — you know the particular fury of the modern scalper economy.
Ontario says those days are over.
On April 23, 2026, Bill 97 — buried inside the province’s spring budget — received royal assent and took effect immediately. Under the new amendments to the Ticket Sales Act, it is now illegal for anyone in Ontario to resell a ticket above the original “all-in” price paid: base cost, service fees, and taxes included. The law applies to concerts, sporting events, and major gatherings — including FIFA World Cup matches and Toronto International Film Festival screenings. Violators face fines of up to $10,000.
Ticketmaster moved fast. The ticketing giant began emailing Ontario users to notify them their resale listings were being pulled, and temporarily shut down its secondary marketplace while it updates its platform to comply. StubHub and SeatGeek say they intend to comply as well, though both pushed back hard on the policy itself.
Doug Ford, for his part, was triumphant. “We’re putting ticket scalpers on notice,” he declared. “Your days of ripping people off are done.”
It’s a satisfying line. And for the many Ontarians who watched tickets to last year’s World Series in Toronto hit $10,000 on resale platforms — or who couldn’t afford the Eras Tour without taking out a second mortgage — it feels like justice.
But it’s worth asking a harder question: does this law actually fix the problem?
The Case For the Law
The intent is straightforward and hard to argue with. A $150 ticket should not become a $600 ticket just because someone with a faster internet connection got to it first. Scalpers — whether individuals or sophisticated bots — have long exploited high-demand events to extract money from fans who have no other option. That’s a real harm, and the province is right to treat it seriously.
The new rules also include meaningful transparency requirements. Resellers must now provide proof of the original price they paid when listing a ticket for sale, and platforms are required to retain sales records for a minimum of three years after the event. That’s not nothing — it creates a paper trail and makes it significantly harder to quietly inflate prices.
The Case Against
Here’s where it gets complicated.
The tickets don’t disappear — they just move.
Regulated platforms like Ticketmaster and StubHub operate in the open. They have buyer protections, fraud guarantees, and dispute processes. When those platforms are required to list at face value, there’s no longer a financial incentive to maintain those guardrails. The scalpers don’t retire — they migrate to Kijiji, Facebook Marketplace, and DMs. And those corners of the internet have no buyer protections whatsoever. Fraud rates there are reportedly nearly four times higher than on regulated platforms. The fan who couldn’t afford a $600 ticket might pay $175 in cash outside the venue for a ticket that turns out to be fake.
SeatGeek put it plainly: “Price controls on resale don’t lower what fans pay. They push transactions and fans off regulated platforms to sites like Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace, where there are no buyer protections.”
The real price problem starts before scalpers ever get involved.
Here’s the thing critics keep pointing out: scalpers are a symptom. The disease is primary market pricing. Dynamic pricing. “Platinum” tickets. Surge pricing that kicks in the moment demand spikes — not at resale, but at the original point of sale. A ticket that starts at $400 on Ticketmaster didn’t get expensive because of a scalper. It got expensive at the source. Ontario’s law caps what a reseller can charge. It does nothing about what Ticketmaster charges in the first place.
Which brings us to a detail that deserves a raised eyebrow.
Live Nation — Ticketmaster’s parent company — enthusiastically supported this law.
“We are in favour of measures that promote fair, transparent ticketing and curb exploitative resale practices,” Live Nation posted to social media.
That’s a remarkable statement from a company that, just last week, was found by a U.S. jury to have illegally monopolized the live music industry. A law that caps the prices of its competitors on the secondary market while leaving its own primary pricing completely untouched? That’s not a consumer protection win for Live Nation. That’s a competitive advantage.
Ontario has tried this before — and Ford himself killed it.
In 2017, Ontario passed legislation capping resale tickets at 50 per cent above face value. The Ford government repealed it the following year, with its own spokesperson calling it “unenforceable.” Now, less than a decade later, Ford is back with a stricter version of the same idea — a full face-value cap — and declaring victory.
What’s changed? The internet is the same. The global platforms are the same. Scalpers operating from outside Ontario’s borders are the same. It’s a fair question, and so far no one in the government has offered a compelling answer.
So, What Does This Actually Mean for You?
If you buy resale tickets through Ticketmaster or StubHub in Ontario, you should see markups disappear — at least on those platforms. That’s a real, immediate change, and it’s not nothing.
But if demand for a hot event outstrips supply — and it will — the economics don’t simply evaporate. Sellers who want more than face value will find other ways to get it. Fans chasing those tickets will follow. Some of those transactions will go sideways. And the structural problems that made tickets unaffordable in the first place — Ticketmaster’s market dominance, dynamic pricing, automated bot purchasing — remain entirely intact.
This law is a step. Whether it’s a meaningful one or a headline-friendly gesture will depend entirely on how it’s enforced, and whether the province is willing to follow the logic all the way to its source.
NCR NOW will continue to follow this story as platforms update their resale marketplaces and enforcement details emerge.
Sources: CBC News, Billboard Canada, NOW Toronto, That Eric Alper, CP24
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