Evidence of meeting #158 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ticketmaster.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Liberal
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
Thank you to our witnesses for testifying today.
Since the launch of StubHub in 2000, the first major secondary ticket sales website, how has the marketplace for tickets to live performances and events changed? Who has the advantage and who has the disadvantage when it comes to that?
The question is for either of you.
Director of Programming, Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall
I'll go first.
The reality is that this marketplace has existed for decades. This is not something that was proliferated at that time. We have seen two categories of resellers out there, and again these have existed since the beginning of the concert industry. You have the professional resellers and you have the individuals who can't use their ticket, for whatever reason, and are trying to get rid of it because the industry generally has a no-refund policy. Sometimes those are people, these days, who will buy four tickets knowing they will only use two, and hope that by selling two they will cover off most of the expense of the first pair. It happens. But I don't think we've seen a proliferation of the secondary market. We've just seen it come to the surface, because it's been democratized in a way that wasn't really the case before. It used to be the guy in the trench coat standing on the corner, yelling at you as you went by. Those people used to circumvent systems by doing things like engaging homeless people to line up for them outside the record store before the on sale.... The technology and the practices have evolved. Instead of those people in line outside the record store, we have bots, and there are all kinds of other things that are trying to circumvent the control that our industry is trying to put in place.
I don't think it's a new problem. When you take a look at it with that larger lens, looking at a longer stretch of history, you recognize that there have been countless legislated interventions over the years. In this province, Ontario, up until a few years ago it was entirely illegal to sell a ticket above face value. As we all know, that did nothing to stop the secondary market, because of the lack of enforcement.
The marketplace is evolving, but I don't think the arrival of StubHub necessarily changed it that much.
Liberal
Adjunct Professor, Music Technology and Digital Media, Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, As an Individual
It's just much faster. The online ticketing is the big change. There wasn't very much online ticketing, and now it's instantaneous and international. There's a lot more money to be made.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
What kinds of best practices would you recommend to our committee? What would you like to see when it comes to secondary ticket sales that other countries are doing?
Director of Programming, Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall
As I said before, a lot of the technology is advancing now as people are getting further along. Biometrics is a great example. The technology exists in some places now for you to walk through a gate, and computers will be able to identify you as an individual, just through cameras, and associate you with a ticket. You wouldn't have to go through a turnstile or show a ticket or anything. If you try to go through without that recognition, then a security guard can be alerted and come to resolve the issue with you.
I think the solutions, from the technology standpoint, will eventually come. They need, as I was suggesting earlier, some encouragement and some support to get them accelerated, but really that's it. Take a look around internationally. There are not a lot of legislated solutions that work. There are a lot of studies that show a number of interventions that have failed, price caps being one of them, but there are not a lot of great examples of ones that work, unfortunately.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
If you speak about biometrics, do you not believe there would be a violation of privacy? Just to watch a show, you're going to have your face recognized, and then it's going to be put in some computer. People are not going to find that worth their.... I wouldn't go, if that's the case.
Director of Programming, Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall
Sure.
I just cite that as one example of many. RFID Solutions technology on mobile phones is a great one. That technology is already literally at our fingertips. There are a number of things that could be advanced, but there is a bit of a lag on adoption, and people need to have the resources in order to implement it well, to develop the technology and make it robust and reliable, so that they can process an arena's worth of people into a building in an hour, and have it work.
We're getting there.
Adjunct Professor, Music Technology and Digital Media, Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, As an Individual
I would add one thing to that. The business is a location-specific business, and even if tax law can be applied to where the event takes place, that might keep some of the money in Canada.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
Thank you very much to both of you. That was very informative and helpful, and a great way to cap off some of the study on secondary resale.
That will bring this meeting to an end.
The meeting is adjourned.
