Ontario passed a new law Thursday to stop U.S. entertainment giant Ticketmaster from selling and then reselling tickets to the same event, but the Opposition warned it will do nothing to end scalping or keep prices down.
The Liberal government, supported by the NDP, passed the Ticket Speculation Act, which Attorney General Chris Bentley said will ensure people have fair access to concerts, theatrical or sport events.
"We want to make sure consumers get a fair break, and the Ticket Speculation Act is important in that it's another step to protect consumers," said Bentley.
"Fair dealing for consumers is what this is about."
The province introduced the legislation over a year ago, after people complained they tried to buy concert tickets the minute they went on sale, only to be redirected to another site where prices were much higher.
Ticketmaster said Thursday it does not divert tickets between Ticketmaster Canada and the TicketsNow site, which it owns, or provide preferential access to primary market tickets to TicketsNow.
"Ticketmaster invests heavily in consumer protection through the development of innovative technology and is a leader in purchaser information security, buyer guarantees, fraud protection and crackdowns on brokers purchasing en masse through online software robots," the company said in a statement.
Ticketmaster has described TicketsNow as a safe resale service for private individuals.
The Opposition called the legislation "a sham," and warned it will not do anything to stop the resale of tickets at greatly inflated prices.
"It's not going to create one more ticket (and) it's not going to reduce the price of tickets one penny," said Progressive Conservative critic Ted Chudleigh.
"Ticketmaster doesn't deflect tickets to TicketsNow; if they did that they'd be out of business."
Even though the New Democrats voted in favour of the new law, they too complained it won't stop scalpers, especially those that use special computer programs to buy up massive lots of tickets the instant they go on sale.
"The amendments do not impact one iota on the 'bot' computer resellers who use a whole gang of computers and operators to, in nanoseconds of ticket sales commencing, purchase huge blocks of tickets and put them on resale sites," said NDP critic Peter Kormos.
"The resale sites are not the owners of the tickets, so they can't be prosecuted under this new legislation, nor can the people using these computer systems to buy huge blocks of tickets because they are not related to the primary seller."
The Tories also expressed concerns about the electronic scalpers.
"There are very sophisticated scalpers with computer programs that buy up these tickets, and this bill does absolutely nothing to impact that problem," said Chudleigh.
Bentley admitted the law wasn't perfect, but said it did its job of making sure the primary seller of tickets can't benefit from resales at prices well above face value.
"It's not all that might be required, but it's an important step to make sure consumers get fair access to tickets at the stated price," he said.
Ticketmaster has, in the past, expressed disappointment with the Ontario legislation, saying it would do nothing to enhance protection for consumers who created and drive the resale market.
It said the company is committed to a transparent, secure marketplace for tickets, and that TicketsNow is "fuelled by the public's demand for scarce event tickets."