Canadian Heritage Committee on May 7th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

For the last five minutes, we are going to Mr. Long.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

You are owned by eBay, which owns Kijiji. I used to always have a high comfort level when I bought from Kijiji, because I always felt I was dealing with Martin Shields or David Yurdiga directly. It was that kind of exchange.

What's the relationship between StubHub and Kijiji? Do you use each other's platforms now? One concern I have now with Kijiji is that sometimes you think you're buying from Martin Shields, but you're buying from a much larger entity. Do you have an active relationship? How does it work?

[Paul Nowosad]

In the ticketing space specifically on Kijiji, we do have an active relationship. Over the rest of this year, it will actually become a more dynamic relationship to remove the consumer-to-consumer, or false business-to-consumer selling cycle and run it all through StubHub, such that people can have both the quality of the service to sell and purchase, and the guarantee to protect and safety and security.

We will, then, be partnering more closely than we already are. We hadn't partnered for the last three years, but we're going to take it up a whole other layer in the last half of this year. We feel that it's very important. The ticketing space, as you have heard over the last couple of hours, is complex. This will give them the opportunity to work with a family company that is at the top of its game.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Try to put this in context for me. How often has StubHub actually banned brokers or bots? Can you put it into some context? Does it happen weekly? Is it one of every thousand transactions, or is it very rare?

[Paul Nowosad]

To be fair, I think it's hard to put a number on it.

Most people would be very surprised if they saw the level of intrusion that's technologically driven to any machine today. It's a little unwieldy. I think the active monitoring—the active technology and human monitoring—is probably the best way to answer that. It is ongoing by both the staff as well as the technology department.

[Laura Dooley]

Certainly we have systems in place.

For example, our payment intermediation process is an inherent fraud deterrent. The practice of fraud on our site, once it goes detected, means that payment will immediately be stopped. We retain payment information, so if it's something that doesn't happen in real time, we can go back and penalize sellers for selling fraudulent tickets. There is thus not an incentive to defraud when you're selling through StubHub, and I think that's an important notion.

Then again, when we do learn of misconduct as far as the way tickets are acquired or what is being sold is concerned, we will take action.

We can certainly return to the committee with more information about this.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Here is a final question from me. Is it true that StubHub was pleased that government dropped part of the anti-scalping law that would have had capped prices for ticket scalpers? Is it true you were pleased with that?

[Laura Dooley]

StubHub joined the rest of the industry, and I think you heard Ms. Benjamin say this earlier as well. We believe price controls or price caps are not an effective mechanism to address the notion of ticket resale. There are a lot of studies out there that support this notion.

We were very supportive of the proposal to remove that provision. We believe it is consistent with a better user experience overall to make sure that sales stay on secure platforms such as StubHub, and we're pleased to join the rest of the industry in that position.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Okay.

I'll share my last minute, Chair.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Just before that one, is there information that you might share with us and send to us?

[Laura Dooley]

Can we share more information about some of our fraud deterrence practices? We're happy to share more information with the committee.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

If I may, I want to quickly follow up on a question Mr. Long asked towards the beginning. He brought up the scenario of a case in which he had looked to buy Morrissey tickets directly, and then an hour later, he said, there were tickets on StubHub in a fairly large number.

I wonder whether there is any way that you have a record, for the date that the Morrissey tickets sold out, of how many tickets were listed on StubHub for, say, Toronto, if I were going to pick a city. Would you have that kind of number for how many tickets were listed on the day the initial tickets went on sale and then sold out?

[Paul Nowosad]

I think we have.

Tickets go on sale, in pre-sales, post-sales, club sales. By the time an on-sale for the general public occurs, there may be 10%, 5% or 20%. That's one of the transparency issues that we believe fully.... Not knowing how many that were already purchased or secured, those may be the ones that are now visible on our site, as compared with those that are now open to the general public.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

That's fair enough, but you would have a number of tickets that were listed for sale for that specific concert.

[Paul Nowosad]

Typically, for many of our events, you'll find clear disclosures of how many tickets are available for the different events.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I was just trying to see whether you would be able to get us that number. I'm wondering whether there is a way for you to backdate it. I'm looking, for example, at Billie Eilish tickets right now. I know they sold out very quickly, and I can see, for just the Toronto location, that it looks as though there are about 200 or more tickets on sale for that venue.

I'm just curious, following up on that question, because he raised a specific one about this concert and about having the experience, an hour after it had sold out, of going on and finding that there were a bunch of tickets there. I just want to get a number, because right now we can all imagine what that number looked like. Perhaps it might help if we have clarity.

[Laura Dooley]

We can ask our data team if that's information that we retain. I don't know that it's information we retain. I would also suggest that the notion that the concert was sold out in that moment.... I think the other follow-up question to ask is how many tickets were released by the primary after that moment when you were told it was initially sold out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

It's just something that we can build upon, if we can get that first, initial bit of information.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Are people physically lining up to buy the ticket, all the individuals who go and who sell it back to you?

I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Can you please find out? If you can get from the data team that day's snapshot, that would be really helpful for us.

On that note, we bring this meeting to an end. Thank you to all of the witnesses.

The meeting is adjourned.