Good morning. Buying resale concert, sports and event tickets is supposed to be more affordable in Ontario – but at least one platform has been slow to play ball. More on that below, along with an unexpected side effect of GLP-1 drugs and funding for World Cup security. But first:

Fans cheer at the top of the eighth inning during Game 7 of the 2025 MLB World Series at Rogers Centre in Toronto on Nov. 1, 2025. Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail

Hi, I’m Josh O’Kane, a Globe culture reporter filling in for Danielle Groen for a few days.

I’ve been writing about the ways Canadians and their governments wrestle with ever-rising event ticket prices for nearly a decade – including, in 2017, when Ontario’s then-Liberal government tried to cap the price of resold tickets at 50-per-cent above face value. The next year, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives scrapped the law’s implementation. Now, empowered by the rage thousands of Toronto Blue Jays fans left behind during last year’s wild postseason run, Ford has reversed course and promised to cap resale prices at face value itself. Other provinces have begun watching to see what they can learn.

The Globe’s consumer-affairs reporter Mariya Postelnyak has joined me in recent years in unpacking the latest volleys in the ticket-sales wars. Last week, she reported that while Ticketmaster had been de-listing resale tickets above the original price, the popular secondary-marketplace operator StubHub was still selling the overpriced tickets. I asked her to walk me through the latest ticketing tumult.

What happened with StubHub last week?

Ontario passed amendments to the Ticket Sales Act last Friday requiring sellers to de-list tickets priced above their original value. A spokesperson for the government said the new rules were effective immediately and companies that didn’t comply faced fines up to $250,000. But StubHub decided it wasn’t going to follow those rules just yet, citing a lack of guidance.

Has anything changed this week?

The wheels are in motion. StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne told me yesterday afternoon that the company was making updates to their system to comply with the price-cap law going forward. He said this came after a “productive conversation” with the Ontario government, even though StubHub still had “many outstanding questions.” And he added that the company continues to believe price caps will strengthen Ticketmaster’s already dominant market position, limit fans and increase fraud.

As of Friday afternoon, there were no resale seats for FIFA games in Canada on Ticketmaster when searching in Ontario. StubHub still had hundreds of seats available for games in Toronto, starting at about $1,600. FIFA World Cup games are not exempt from Ontario’s new rules. Supplied

Is price-cap legislation even realistic? We’ve both interviewed the University of Victoria economics professor Pascal Courty about this in the past, and I know he doesn’t think it will be easy to enforce.

The verdict is split. One London-based consulting firm found that ticketing fraud was almost four times higher in jurisdictions with price caps. Professor Courty has warned that “if two people are willing, the sellers will find all kinds of innovative ways to extract more from the buyers.” But he also told me that when we put aside high-demand acts such as Taylor Swift, resale markets don’t generate much controversy, and work pretty efficiently.

On the other hand, Billboard magazine found that the price to see Swift’s Eras Tour opening in Europe – where tighter rules around ticket price caps generally prevail – was 87-per-cent cheaper than the U.S. average. (Some people attribute differences in demand as playing a role there, though, so it can be hard to isolate the variables.)

What are other provinces trying to do about ticketing?

We’re not seeing anything as robust as Ontario’s new rules, but a few provinces are making moves in the same direction. Though short of an outright price cap, Quebec now requires consent from an event’s producer for tickets to resell above face value. B.C.’s Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport, meanwhile, said the province is “monitoring closely” what happens with Ontario’s legislation in terms of lessons they can glean, including around World Cup games.

The U.S. Department of Justice revealed a tentative settlement with Ticketmaster owner Live Nation in March after pursuing a long antitrust case. A few weeks ago, after dozens of states kept pursuing the case, a Manhattan jury found that the companies functioned as an illegal monopoly. Will consumers see any changes from this?

The Justice Department’s lawsuit had accused Live Nation of stifling competition – by way of preventing venues from using multiple ticket sellers, for example. The settlement did little to address this, and the judge overseeing the case described the outcome as “entirely unacceptable.”

But the jury in the states’ case found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster “unlawfully monopolized” primary ticketing services, and that Ticketmaster overcharged buyers by about US$1.72 per ticket. So there could be a damages payout worth hundreds of millions. It’s not yet clear if Canadians could be eligible for damages if compensation is awarded, though some reports suggest Canadians who purchased tickets through Ticketmaster for shows in Canada could potentially qualify for compensation.

A more consequential outcome, however, would be a shift in the competitive landscape. Live Nation might be required to sell off significant assets in its business, though a full breakup with Ticketmaster is far from certain.