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.
4:05 p.m.
Vice-President, Legal Affairs, Vivid Seats
I believe our sales are in the States.
Pardon me?
4:05 p.m.
Vice-President, Legal Affairs, Vivid Seats
I think our sales are registered in the States, yes.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Yes, I believe that too.
This is my main problem. If I import a car by myself, I have to go through customs and make sure the bumpers are correct, the seatbelts are okay, the airbags are compatible with our regulations and stuff. Importing stuff is a complicated thing. My concern here is that this “new solution” can be something good. Maybe I'm an old guy, an old angry white guy who is not happy with new technology.
I'm sorry, I took your role, man. Can I sub in for you for a second?
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thanks for that. What's the commission? No, it's okay.
The reality here is that this is my biggest problem. In all these new ventures coming into our market, you guys—not “you guys”, I'm sorry—come in from other countries or just south of the border. They come in and grab some economic activity, which is totally fair. It seems to meet the needs of the audience, the needs of the consumers, but what stops you from, let's say, at least incorporating and declaring all the sales, as Ticketmaster does?
I don't think I'm crazy about all this resale stuff, to tell the truth, but it's a tendency. I think for taxi drivers, Uber is a real storm and it shook the situation a lot and there are some good things about Uber. But the first thing is this. If you do business in Canada, do you plan to incorporate in Canada and declare your income tax, as companies in Canada pay income tax, hire Canadian employees, contribute to the hospitals and roads?
4:10 p.m.
Vice-President, Legal Affairs, Vivid Seats
We plan to significantly grow the size of that office, and the income that is attributed to that office will certainly be paying Canadian income tax. I can't comment on the overall market trend, but we've made an investment here. Our intention is to be here.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
Your speaking time has elapsed, Mr. Nantel.
I now yield the floor to Mr. Breton for seven minutes.
May 14th, 2019 / 4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thank the witnesses for being with us today.
My next question is for Ms. Tarlton.
According to your purchasing policy, you want to limit the number of tickets that can be bought through this type of transaction, in order to discourage unfair ticket purchasing practices. I am using the Ticketmaster terms here.
Last September, CBC/Radio-Canada and Toronto Star reporters attended a conference where they met Ticketmaster representatives. They were promoting a tool known as TradeDesk. It seems that that tool helps the resellers to purchase several hundreds or even thousands of tickets at once. This made the first page of the newspapers. If one looks at the service fees applied to each sale or resale of tickets, one can conclude that that practice is very lucrative.
I have two questions for you. What is Ticketmaster's position regarding the resale of show tickets? How does the TradeDesk tool work?
4:10 p.m.
Chairman, Ticketmaster Canada
I'll answer the second question first.
TradeDesk is an inventory management tool. The allegation that it is a tool that's used to purchase tickets is false. That's not the purpose of the tool whatsoever.
I go back to my remarks as well, in that Ticketmaster does not have a tool that facilitates the mass purchase of tickets for brokers or anybody else for that matter. The technology that we have in our primary system is deployed by content owners, for example, artist tours, venue operators and promoters. They will set the rules as to how many tickets to a given event can be purchased. Largely, it's high-demand events, so we're talking about six, eight or 10 tickets. At that point, our responsibility as the primary ticket seller is to block those bots that I spoke of, at the rate of five billion bots in North America a month. We block them from infiltrating the system and from trying to access more than that. We have had success to the tune of those kinds of numbers and the magnitude of blocking the bots. If we have determined that those tickets have been purchased by a bot that somehow infiltrated the system and pulled the larger tickets, the complement of provincial legislation that makes the use of bots for purchasing tickets illegal is helpful. It allows us to cancel those tickets and put them back into the hands of fans. To answer the TradeDesk question, it's not a tool used to purchase tickets. From Ticketmaster's perspective, we follow the rules of the content owner on any given event.
Your second question was about our position in the resale space, if I understood you correctly. Our position is to integrate primary and secondary in order to offer choice to that consumer and to give them full visibility into their options to buy safely. If they buy a ticket from a fan who posts on our site, beside the other ticket that could be sold by the venue, that ticket is guaranteed to get them in because we'll cancel the original ticket and issue them a new ticket. Today we use bar codes; in the future we could use security tokens of another sort.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
How do you explain the fact that these reporters talked with the Ticketmaster representatives about the fact that they were promoting the tool in question, which allows users to purchase hundreds or thousands of tickets?
4:10 p.m.
Chairman, Ticketmaster Canada
They have that wrong. That's my response to that.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
4:10 p.m.
Chairman, Ticketmaster Canada
Correct.
They would not be onside with our terms and conditions.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
You explained that you monitor ticket purchases on your platform with a system to prevent robots from buying them.
Is that correct?
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
You talked about a system used to prevent that.
Did I understand you correctly?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
What are the service fees included in the cost of resale tickets?
What are the fees, per ticket?
Are there agreements involved? Do you decide on the amount of the service fees you will charge, according to the shows or events?
4:15 p.m.
Chairman, Ticketmaster Canada
Again, I'll rephrase it to make sure I've captured the question.
The service charges that are on a resold ticket are also commercially negotiated with the venue, the promoter, the team, etc. In large measure, those are on a percentage basis. There will be other costs included in those service charges to pay off advertising acquisition charges, etc.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
My next question is addressed to Mr. Beallor and Mr. Fitts.
I know less about your business. How do you keep this sort of transaction, like the bulk purchasing of tickets, out of your business?
4:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Legal Affairs, Vivid Seats
Well, I'd offer that we have supported anti-bot legislation whenever it comes up. We're supportive of bans on that practice. We don't think it's a good experience for anybody. We have a security team and we review transactions. We're mindful of that topic and we prepare for it.
