An Etobicoke woman’s change.org petition to regulate ticket reselling in Canada has garnered more than 11,500 signatures.
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Shannon McKarney started the petition on Nov. 19, right in the middle of Taylor Swift’s unprecedented six-night, sold-out run at Rogers Centre in Toronto from Nov. 14-16 and Nov. 21-23.
“For most Canadians, tickets were inaccessible – largely due to the unregulated and shady resale market,” McKarney wrote on change.org.
“When the last dates for the Eras tour were announced for Canada in August of 2023, millions of people worldwide signed up for Ticketmaster’s opaque ‘Verified Fan’ service, the only legitimate way to access tickets.”
However, McKarney says “a significant portion of these applicants were not actual Taylor Swift fans planning to attend a concert, but rather individuals whose intent was ONLY to resell tickets for profit.”
McKarney says “thousands of tickets were immediately bought by resellers and offered up for profit on sites like StubHub, with prices exceeding face value by more than 1000%. In any other context, this is price gouging.”
She pointed out that “reselling also leads to significant fraud, as vulnerable people desperate to find affordable resale tickets are frequently taken in by scams.”
McKarney says recent Toronto sales for both Oasis and Coldplay at the new Rogers Stadium at Downsview Park next summer have also had demand inflated by resellers, with regular fans unable to access face value tickets.
“It is time to regulate ticket reselling so that tickets cannot be resold for amounts over the face value,” she writes. “We urge the Canadian federal and provincial governments to intervene and legislate restrictions on ticket reselling.”
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Brian Masse, NDP critic for innovation, science and industry and MP for Windsor West, told CTV News Toronto on Nov. 22 that he had written a letter to Francois-Philippe Champagne, federal minister of innovation, science and industry, calling for a crackdown on price gouging.
“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 entertainment industry. Moms who have saved up for a gift their kids and hard-working young people struggling to get ahead have been heartbroken to find out they cannot afford tickets,” the letter reads.
“Instead, scalpers and bots have been allowed to scoop up these highly sought after tickets and resell them for thousands of dollars each – far out of reach for ordinary people.”
CTV News Toronto also reported a petition, sponsored by a federal Green Party MP Mike Morrice (Kitchener Central), that has been calling for better protections for ticket buyers in Canada, noting how one resale site listed a $13,000 Swift ticket as a “great deal.”
Among the restrictions McKarney would like to see are outlawing ticket resale for over face value, transparency from ticket vendors clarifying who can access tickets; and demanding ticket vendors invest directly in anti-fraud and anti-bot measures.