TORONTO — Fans hoping to be dancing in the dark when Bruce Springsteen visits Toronto for a February concert were left with hungry hearts when prices soared to more than US$5,000 on the secondary market.
Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley originally wrote a letter to the Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services laced with Springsteen lyrics in a bid to have the province respond to the “gouging” of the secondary market for online ticket sales.
“Those who can afford to pay are being Held Up Without a Gun on-line by ticket brokers looking for Easy Money,” Bradley wrote in the letter.
Secondary seller StubHub had several tickets to the Toronto concert available days before they were put on sale through Ticketmaster. Retail value of the tickets ranged from CA$68.50 to $175, but on StubHub, the same tickets were being sold for between US$300 to upwards of $5,000.
He compared the process to organized crime.
“The Sopranos would be delighted to be involved in this business — and perhaps they are,” Bradley said. “(Springsteen’s) whole career has been based on being a representative of the working people and they’re being denied access.”
Ticketmaster and StubHub did not return the National Post’s requests for comment.
Bradley, a lifelong Springsteen fan, later readdressed his letter to the Ministry of the Attorney and asked it to introduce laws that would put a cap on resale prices, ban sales on the secondary market before tickets are made available to the general public and ban secondary online sellers like StubHub from selling blocks of tickets to other online secondary sellers.
Ontario’s laws for the resale market fall under the Ticket Speculation Act. In 2010, laws were updated to ensure Ticketmaster could not sell and then resell tickets to the same event. The act was amended in July to force secondary sellers to authenticate tickets being sold online.
“If these systems are not in place, the resale of tickets for more than face value is prohibited,” said Brendan Crawley, a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Attorney General.
Crawley said there is no information regarding the alleged speculation tickets sold for the Toronto Springsteen concert, but even if there was, it would be a police matter.
He also said if the tickets are too pricey, buyers have the choice to decide to not go.
“Nobody is forced to pay any particular price for an event; if the price is too high, then a person may decide not to purchase — just as he or she would for any other goods or services.”
The recommendations Bradley made were taken from legislation currently being considered in New Jersey, he said. In 2014, the state of New York banned the selling of “speculative tickets” — when a seller and buyer agree upon an often-inflated price on the secondary market before tickets are even sold on the primary market — and automated ticket purchasing software.
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