With Toronto Blue Jays tickets being resold for thousands of dollars, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said his government may reinstate anti-scalping laws that it previously repealed shortly after taking office.
“My personal opinion, and I'm going to talk to the whole team, they're gouging people,” he told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “There's one player in the market who controls the tickets, and that's not right for people.”
Asked if he would specifically consider legislation, Mr Ford said the government would consider its options.
Ford's comments came a day after Blue Jays World Series tickets went on sale at Ticketmaster. Within two hours of going on sale, tickets were selling for more than $2,000.
The price of a ticket for Section 135's first game Tuesday at Rogers Center was $4,954. The lowest individual ticket price found was for Section 510 at $1,723 including tax.
This price caused an uproar on social media, with many Jays fans wondering why tickets could be purchased within minutes and then sold back to the market for significantly more than the purchase price.
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Anger over price reselling is not new, with anger erupting last year when similar ticket prices and dissatisfaction were observed during Taylor Swift's Elas tour.
The Ford government previously repealed part of the law that limited ticket resale prices to 50% of their original face value.
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A clause in the previous Liberal government's ticket sales law would have imposed that cap, but the Progressive Conservatives suspended its implementation shortly after the 2018 election.
A year later, in 2019, it rescinded the rule, saying it was unenforceable and threatened to drive up costs by encouraging consumers to buy tickets on the black market.
The Liberal Party, led by former Prime Minister Kathleen Wynne, originally proposed a bill to combat scalper bots, which skim off large numbers of ticket tickets.
Ontario Liberal Party parliamentary leader John Fraser told reporters Wednesday that reinstating the anti-scalping law is “the right thing to do.”
“If everyone's waiting in line and they can't get a ticket and the next minute the price is 10, 12 times higher, that's not fair,” Fraser said.
Asked if the bill should be withdrawn, NDP Leader Marit Stiles told reporters “100 percent” it should be withdrawn.
“When it came to the Taylor Swift concert, this is what we asked for. Well, we need the government to act,” Mr Styles said, adding that his party plans to bring something to parliament soon.
In his comments Wednesday, Mr. Ford said he did not believe that any one company, by name Ticketmaster, was “in control of everything.”
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