Taylor Swift fans queue outside Rogers Centre to shop for merchandise ahead of the opening night of Swift's Eras tour in Toronto, on Nov. 13.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
When the Taylor Swift extravaganza rolls into Toronto this week in a flurry of friendship bracelets and good vibes, spare a moment to salute the embattled fans that made it to the finish line.
By now, the entire planet is well versed in the agony and the ecstasy of scoring a spot to see the Eras Tour, which wraps up in Vancouver next month after an extraordinary run. But if Swifties were hoping for a reprieve from a lopsided and broken ticket market, they know better now.
Instead, legions of fans got stuck in Ticketmaster’s wait-list purgatory, or worse, got kicked off the site altogether, fuelling a grossly inflated secondary ticket market – or less politely, scalping – running into thousands of dollars for one ticket.
That breathtaking price is just Ms. Swift’s version of a problem that has plagued concert-goers for years, abetted by government inaction. The Competition Bureau, which took on Ticketmaster in 2019 over misleading pricing, has been puzzlingly silent on the dysfunction of ticket market. This, despite being armed with expanded powers to protect consumers.
In Ontario, Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government floated a proposal that would have capped resale prices at a 50 per cent markup of the original price, an idea the Progressive Conservatives dismissed as “unenforceable.” This ignores the fact that plenty of European countries have found a way to do exactly that, either through strict caps on resale prices or outright bans.
Ticketmaster, which allows resale activity on its site for many live events, could feasibly rein in runaway prices by enforcing caps of its own. If not, governments could impose such caps, easily enforced on Ticketmaster’s operations, despite the protests of the Ontario PCs.
Even the 2024 federal budget gave a shout-out to sky-high ticket prices, with the Liberals vowing to rein in junk fees and making vague promises about “cracking down on fraudulent resellers and reseller practices.” Exactly how that works or what that looks like, nobody knows.
While it’s true that scores of lucky fans managed to land seats to the Eras show at a reasonable (or reasonable-for-Taylor-Swift) cost, many others were left fighting for the scraps on the “resale market,” a genteel term for predatory scalping. To wit: any poor soul who wants to see the pop star in person this weekend is looking at spending a minimum of $3,400 for a single ticket on StubHub.
But so what, you say? If diehard fans are willing to plunk down unholy amounts of money for a ticket, so be it – it’s supply and demand, the free market in action. But this is a market nearly void of competition. Ticketmaster’s stranglehold on live music acts – cemented by its 2010 merger with Live Nation, which controls venues – means that stadium-filling artists like Ms. Swift have no choice but to team up with Ticketmaster if they have any hope of meeting demand. It’s market dysfunction rigged against the very fans it purports to serve.
It’s time to do right by the Swifties, and all the other fans who want to see their favourite artists without being thrown to the predatory wolves of the ticketing industry. Art, even the glitter-dusted pop music variety, is worth protecting. Imagine the furor if a day at the ROM cost $300. It’s time for the Competition Bureau to look at the safeguards in place for consumers in a ticketing landscape with little competition, and for the provinces to step up to the plate on a resale market that has no ceiling on markups.
In the meantime, the U.S. Department of Justice has Ticketmaster in its crosshairs, suing the ticketing giant earlier this year for alleged anti-competitive conduct. The case could take years in the courts. For its part, Canada chimed in with a boilerplate statement from federal Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne about “fighting for more competition in every sector of the Canadian economy.”
But ask any fan of live music – be it Swift or Oasis or Springsteen – how far that goes in putting a dent in current-day prices. Not much. Some music lovers have done the math and jetted off to Europe, where catching an Eras show – and paying for airfare, hotels and food – is still less expensive than buying tickets here in Canada.
So to all the Swifties belting out Bad Blood at the Rogers Centre this weekend, sing loud and proud and enjoy your three hours of bliss.
You earned it. And you definitely paid for it.