The provincial government is trying to protect concertgoers from bots and scalpers. Ordinary ticket-buyers can only hope it will work.
The government is proposing the Ticket Sales Act to bring in a suite of changes that it hopes will help level the playing field so regular people have a reasonable chance of getting tickets without being at the mercy of resellers.
The act wouldn’t fix all the problems with concert tickets, but it would tackle some of them.
The law would ban bots, the software that grabs tickets before ordinary humans can hope to do so. That would remove a major source of aggravation.
It would also put more rules on resellers, including requiring them to disclose the face value of a ticket, added fees, terms and conditions and to be clear about the fact that they are a secondary seller. They would also not be able to sell tickets they don’t actually have. They would have to provide refunds if the event is cancelled or under some other circumstances.
As with many products, tickets can command high prices because fans are willing to pay them. As long as there is demand, buyers and sellers will manage to find each other.
The government is trying to bring some order to the Wild West, but the new law won’t suddenly make concert tickets cheaper.
