No apparent fines yet for ticket resellers under Ontario price-cap law

Portugal and Croatia line up for the national anthems during a World Cup round of 32 soccer match, in Toronto on Thursday, July 2, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sammy Kogan

Ontario’s World Cup matches have come and gone with ticket resale platforms running afoul of a new price cap law but seemingly facing no penalties from the province.

The law banned the resale of Ontario concert and sports tickets for prices above face value. It came into effect in April, well in advance of six World Cup games Toronto was due to host.

The last of Toronto’s matches wrapped Thursday, when major ticket resellers StubHub, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats admitted they’re not in compliance with the new law, in part because they’re still making sense of it.

Yet the province doesn’t appear to have fined any of these violators.

As of Friday, no fines or charges were listed for the two ticket companies — StubHub and SeatGeek — on a website the province runs warning the public of companies flouting laws.

The province did not immediately confirm whether it had issued any fines, but Cristian Buzo Tingarov, a spokesperson for the minister of public and business service delivery and procurement, said, “We will not hesitate to hold bad actors who break the rules accountable.”

‘No compliance = a fine’

Asked about the timeline for potential fines, Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford, said that anyone on the government’s consumer beware list that doesn’t take action to comply will face a fine.

“The timeline is clear, no compliance = a fine,” she wrote in an email.

When the province launched the new ticket law in the spring, it promised fines of up to $10,000 for repeat offenders. The potential penalties were hiked to $25,000 in June as the World Cup neared.

The province said at the time that non-compliant businesses could also face court-ordered fines of up to $50,000 for individuals and $250,000 for corporations.

“What we’re seeing with the World Cup is that this is mostly just a symbolic piece of legislation,” said David Clement, policy director at the Consumer Choice Centre.

“It’s unmanageable, it’s unenforceable and it is very difficult, regardless of how much they may want to increase the fines, to actually implement this in any serious way.”

The difficulty stems from the fact that a resale website can’t easily figure out the face value of a ticket because the original was seldom sold through their own platform, Clement said.

• READ ALSO: Toronto resident felt ‘cheated’ after StubHub took back money from World Cup ticket sale

While Ticketmaster argues every purchaser receives a receipt which lists what customers paid, Clement said that documentation can easily be altered, causing problems for resale sites.

Asked why they weren’t obeying the new legislation, platforms pointed to confusion with the law or concerns about its architecture.

StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said in an email that his company has unresolved issues with what level of proof sellers should provide to verify a ticket’s original price.

Meanwhile, SeatGeek’s vice-president of government affairs Joe Freeman said in another email that the platform is still working to understand its compliance obligations and looking for meaningful guidance.

Over at VividSeats, spokesperson Julia Young said the company had remedied nearly all of the areas of non-compliance that were identified by the Ontario government.

She said in an email that the company expects to be in compliance this month but is still in conversation with the province around how to meet its obligations.

In late April and early May, the province sent 27 ticket resale websites, including StubHub, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats, letters announcing the businesses would be inspected for compliance.

As part of that process, they’d have an initial call with the province, which would gather general info about their ticket selling behaviours, and then be sent a request for more records.

The province’s letter warned the process could result in followup inspections and said if a business “does not co-operate, enforcement action may be taken.”

After the letters were sent, the province added SeatGeek and StubHub to its consumer beware list for lack of compliance. It has not updated the entries with any fines.

Clement said this shows the regulations were no more than an attempt at a “public relations win” before the World Cup and the lack of compliance will repeat itself the next time a big Ontario event is in the spotlight.

“It is going to continue if the Toronto Maple Leafs have anything resembling success and make the playoffs again. It will continue if the Toronto Blue Jays make the playoffs and have success, and let’s say go to the World Series again, and the same goes for the Toronto Raptors,” he said.

“We will continuously see on repeat, the unenforceability of this legislation.”

— With files from Allison Jones and Liam Casey

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 3, 2026.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press