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.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
Is the team made up only of human beings, or is there a system in place?
How does it work?
4:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Legal Affairs, Vivid Seats
No. We use anti-fraud technology to carefully vet our sellers. Vivid Seats is very careful with who we let sell on our website. For example, if we have a new seller, we require a proof of purchase from them and we also check references. We don't actually pay that seller until after an event has happened. Fraudulent tickets are very rare on the site and we discourage bad actors.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I appreciate your being here today. This has been an interesting study.
I really appreciate the words “choice” and “consumer” and the old “consumer be aware” type of thing. I think I've heard that a bit. Also, I think I hear that a lot of policing is going on by both your groups in the sense of bots and getting away from the paper to try to control the fraud out there.
You both mentioned provinces and what they have done in legislation. When things seem to go sideways with consumers, people start poking at governments and wanting them to do something, and then industry responds to try to keep the government out of doing something. I guess it's my preference to stay out, but obviously we've had some provinces doing something. What do you think about what the provinces have done? Can you maybe relate it to what we might do?
4:15 p.m.
Chairman, Ticketmaster Canada
That's a very fantastic question, in that the provinces have acted on ticketing legislation in large measure as an outcropping of the Tragically Hip tour in 2016, where it was very obvious that there was more demand than supply. From there, it opened a dialogue across the country on what we can do about this, because it is a global issue. In part, we talk about the productivity of bot legislation. The taxpayers don't expect governments to go and find the cheaters who are out there in foreign countries, but to have that level of language in the legislation allows us, as industry, to combat it and to at least cancel, for example, if they do infiltrate the system.
As for what we can do in sync at the federal level, in the United States, for example, there is the federal BOTS Act. We could maybe become more consistent across the country with some of this language, so that it goes at a more macro scale as opposed to trying to combat a global issue on a regional scale. Bots would be an example.
The speculative posting is another real problem for consumers. By that, as I think we mentioned earlier in the conversation, we mean looking for a ticket that doesn't exist. We do see a lot of that. Even as the primary ticket company, we may get asked a question by a consumer about why a ticket is available on this site and is not available on ours or is not on sale yet. It's because that ticket doesn't exist. The language around speculative postings is very valuable.
There's another interesting thing to think about from a heritage perspective. I reflect on how in Ontario there was a temporary portion of time before the tax was harmonized when there was an element of an exemption on the amusement tax if you had Canadian content opening for a major attraction. That's an interesting thing for us to maybe consider elaborating on. What could Heritage Canada do? What could it benefit? How do we continue to build out Canadian content?
We can think about it in the opposite sense in terms of provincial legislation if done wrong. Arguably, we would have a different position than Vivid does on the most recent regulations in Ontario, in that it looks like the unintended consequences of some of these new regulations actually enhance the cheaters market and are not pro-consumer. The idea is that if you put too much restriction on a free market, a global market, then touring attractions may just choose not to come to Canada. We've come at it more on keeping it open. Let the best technology and the best attraction attract the most consumers.
We think about it that way, but if you flip it around, the negative consequence of less touring traffic is less opportunity for Canadians, and maybe we can enhance that by saying that we'll put some Canadian content in front of the American attractions or the international attractions that are coming.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you.
You have a few seconds to see if you can answer.
4:20 p.m.
Vice-President, Legal Affairs, Vivid Seats
Sure. I guess I want to push back about the new regulations in Ontario facilitating cheaters; I think she might be referring to the possibility for ticket transferability. I don't think somebody who can't make an event and needs to resell their ticket is a cheater. This new language would help fans resell tickets.
The Ontario legislature has required the disclosure of holdbacks, and while venues certainly have the right to offer their tickets for sale as they see fit, I think it causes a frustrating experience for fans when they don't understand that only half of the seats in a venue are being put up for sale. I want to talk about that very briefly.
Generally speaking, I think it's been a bit of a mixed bag. For example, Ontario initially had a price cap, and I feel that a price cap is a mistake for a free market. I think that pushes people off websites like Vivid Seats, which have a 100% buyer guarantee and a high fulfillment rate, and onto street corner transactions, so I think price caps are a mistake.
However, we do support the anti-bots legislation. We strongly support that. We also support the requirement that all resale marketplaces offer a buyer a guarantee that they'll be delivered a valid ticket on time or their money back. We think that's the right move, and we support that.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
May 14th, 2019 / 4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
Thanks very much.
Sadly, I have five minutes.
You're from broadcasting, so this is the rapid fire round. Here we go.
Ms. Tarlton, how many minutes, using AI and ML, does it take to block a billion bots?
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
Exactly, so 60 billion bots blocked could happen in five minutes.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
How many did you miss in the last year? How many billions of bots got through your defence systems?
4:20 p.m.
Chairman, Ticketmaster Canada
Many. I mean, that's an ongoing arms race. We'll continue to try to fight it.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
What are your investments as Ticketmaster—and I'm going to Vivid Seats next—to build up that arms race?
4:20 p.m.
Chairman, Ticketmaster Canada
It's a multi-million dollar investment annually, and it will continue.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
How much has Ticketmaster spent in the last year on that issue? Hundreds?
4:20 p.m.
Chairman, Ticketmaster Canada
That's what I mean.
From our investment, North America largely, and then we expand it to global operations where we can win there, as in we can try to stay ahead of the bad offers—
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
I'm with you.
Vivid Seats, how much money would you spend on that issue?
