StubHub Fined Under Ontario Ticket Resale Cap; Verification Dispute Continues

Ontario has imposed C$20,000 in administrative penalties against StubHub Canada under its new ticket resale rules, prompting the marketplace to say it will appeal as a months-long dispute over how secondary platforms are supposed to verify original ticket prices continues.

The province’s Consumer Beware List shows two C$10,000 penalties issued to StubHub on Sept. 9. One alleges the company made a ticket available for sale, or facilitated a sale, above Ontario’s resale price cap. The other says StubHub facilitated a sale without proof of the total price originally paid to the primary seller. No criminal charges are listed, and the public record does not identify the event or transaction involved.

StubHub, however, says it intends to challenge the penalties rather than pay them without contest.

“The fact is we are upholding our responsibility as best we can despite the law’s silence on some core issues,” spokesperson Jack Sterne told The Canadian Press.

Sterne specifically pointed to the unresolved question of how an independent marketplace is expected to verify a ticket’s original purchase price. StubHub said it will continue discussions with the province while defending its position through the appeals process.

The planned appeal distinguishes StubHub’s case from the C$25,000 in administrative penalties Ontario recently imposed against SeatGeek Canada under the same regulatory framework.

TicketNews reported earlier this month that SeatGeek received three penalties after the province alleged violations involving the resale-price cap, disclosure of the original purchase price and facilitating a resale without receiving proof of that price.

Ontario subsequently announced Sept. 16 that SeatGeek did not file an appeal with the Licence Appeal Tribunal during the 15-day appeal period and is therefore required to pay the C$25,000 penalty.

StubHub’s decision to pursue an appeal could now produce a more detailed administrative record surrounding one of the central implementation questions raised since Ontario’s new resale rules took effect.

What Counts as Proof Remains Central to Dispute

Ontario law now prohibits individuals and businesses from reselling a ticket — or facilitating its resale — for more than the original total price paid to the primary seller, excluding permitted resale-platform fees and applicable taxes.

The law also places a separate obligation on sellers and marketplaces. A seller cannot list a ticket through a secondary platform without providing proof of the price originally paid, while the platform cannot facilitate the sale unless it has received that proof.

The statute expressly gives Ontario’s minister authority to adopt regulations specifying what constitutes acceptable proof of the original price. The province’s current public guidance states that marketplaces must receive proof before allowing a resale, but does not identify a particular form of documentation or spell out how a platform must authenticate information supplied by an individual seller.

That distinction has been at the center of marketplace objections for months.

When Ontario first placed StubHub and SeatGeek on its Consumer Beware List in June, TicketNews reported that both companies said they had been seeking additional guidance about how the new requirements should operate.

StubHub said at the time it had spent weeks seeking clarification on issues including acceptable proof of an original price, while SeatGeek argued that competing resale platforms often do not have direct access to the transaction data maintained by the original ticket issuer.

The issue can become particularly complicated for season-ticket packages and other bundled inventory, where the price assigned to an individual event may not be as straightforward as a single-ticket primary purchase. TicketNews has separately examined how those questions have affected Ontario season-ticket holders trying to determine the permitted resale price for individual games.

Ontario’s public-facing ticketing guidance says primary sellers must now display the total price paid on issued tickets, including tickets sold as part of packages such as season tickets. But StubHub has also argued that receipts or other seller-supplied documentation can potentially be altered, leaving unresolved the question of what a third-party marketplace must do to establish that the documentation it receives is accurate.

A spokesperson for Ontario Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery Stephen Crawford did not provide The Canadian Press with details about the transactions behind StubHub’s penalties, instead reiterating the province’s position that ticket sellers must comply with the resale cap and may face enforcement for violations.

StubHub has likewise declined to identify the ticket or event involved.

The appeal therefore could turn on a much narrower question than the broader debate over whether Ontario should impose a resale-price cap at all: what StubHub received from the seller in the transaction at issue, what Ontario considered deficient about it and what standard the province expects competing marketplaces to use when determining whether proof of an original ticket price is sufficient.

For now, Ontario’s public enforcement record says only that StubHub facilitated a sale “without proof.” StubHub says the rules governing how marketplaces should verify that proof remain insufficiently defined. An appeal would give the Licence Appeal Tribunal an opportunity to review the province’s penalty and confirm, revoke or vary the order.