The Ontario government has fined the ticket resale platform SeatGeek $25,000 for allegedly breaking its new ban on selling tickets for more than face value.
The fine was levied against the company on Aug. 28 and, according to the province, it did not file an appeal in the two weeks that followed.
That means SeatGeek will now be expected to pay the full $25,000 penalty to Ontario for allegedly failing to ensure tickets are not resold above face value, for failing to disclose the original face value of the ticket, and for facilitating the resale of tickets without proof of original price.
“The penalty is the result of new financial enforcement measures introduced by the province through the 2026 Ontario Budget: A Plan to Protect Ontario, to crack down on illegal ticket resales, protect consumers and families, and keep tickets affordable for fans and families,” the government wrote in a news release.
Joe Freeman, the VP of government affairs for SeatGeek, said in a statement sent to Global News that the concerns his company had about the legislation persist.
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“The core challenge hasn’t changed. Many sellers, including season ticket holders, don’t have access to the original face value of their tickets. That information sits with the primary ticketer, and Ticketmaster has not been forthcoming with it,” he wrote in a statement.
“This means that independent platforms, like SeatGeek, have limited ability to obtain or verify the price paid when the ticket was purchased from the primary seller.”
Other ticket resale companies have also claimed the new law is confusing and hard to follow.
The resale rules technically came into effect as soon as the budget received Royal Assent on April 24, but the government opted for an education-first approach, writing to secondary sellers like SeatGeek, StubHub, FIFA and VividSeat to tell them to get in line.
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However, despite the letters from the government, tickets on those sites continued to be sold online well above face value. In early June, the provincial government named SeatGeek and StubHub on its Consumer Beware list as a punishment for selling tickets above face value.
The government took months to issue the fines and, behind the scenes, industry sources understood changes were coming to the law.
Those sources previously told Global News the premier’s office had instructed Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement Stephen Crawford’s office to draft regulations to work out how to define the face value of a ticket and how secondary markets will have to verify it.
The concern from resale sites is that they currently have no way to verify the original price of tickets because they can’t access the e-tickets or metadata from primary sellers.
People looking to resell tickets could use artificial intelligence or Photoshop to edit the price of their original ticket, for example, to resell it for more with no easy way to spot the change.
The unappealed fine for SeatGeek raises questions over whether changes are still planned for the law.
Get rid of dynamic pricing everywhere.
Just have a fair price system