The Ontario government has a four-point plan to improve the ticket buying process.
A survey collecting input from 34,000 people was done following public outrage last year when ticket to the Tragically Hip's final tour were near impossible to find without having to pay BIG bucks.
The proposed legislation would cap markups on resold tickets at 50 per cent of their face value. "We're going to be requiring that on a ticket there is a face value of the ticket that is printed. That becomes the base price. That is the price that everything is measured against. We are also going to require that that face value is also the all-in price," explains Attorney General Yasir Naqvi.
Often times tickets are marked up 4x or 5x the face value and Naqvi sees the cap as a way of stripping scalpers of their incentive.
The government is also looking to make scalper bots illegal. "One of the things we are proposing to do is to give fans and industry the right to sue those who use bots or facilitate the reselling of tickets through bots."
Naqvi says fines are still being worked out but $25,000 may be the maximum for anyone found breaking the law.
If passed, the legislation would be in place by the Fall.