StubHub fined for allegedly violating Ontario ticket resale law, plans to appeal

The Ford government has fined another ticket resale platform for allegedly violating its new ban on selling seats for more than face value.

Ontario’s Consumer Beware List showed Monday that StubHub was being fined a total of $20,000 for two alleged contraventions of a new ticketing law brought in during the spring.

The new rules were brought in through the 2026 budget, banning the sale of all tickets for more than their original face value, something the government said would “protect consumers and families, and keep tickets affordable for fans and families.”

A spokesperson for StubHub said it disagreed with the fine and planned to fight it through an appeal.

“The fact is we are upholding our responsibility as best we can despite the law’s silence on some core issues, like how a marketplace should verify the original price of a ticket,” they wrote in a statement.

“The Government has acknowledged this gap and indicated the Ticket Sales Act will be fixed through regulation. We will continue to engage in productive conversation to address these matters, while we defend our rights through the appeals process.”

Since the rules were introduced, companies like StubHub and SeatGeek — which was recently fined $25,000 — have complained the new resale rules are impossible to enforce.

They argue that they can’t verify that the face value of tickets hasn’t been digitally altered, while confirming the game-by-game face value of season tickets has also proved complicated.

At one point, the government indicated to the ticket reselling industry that it planned to update the law through regulation to address those concerns, although it has not made any public announcement.

The recent fines for StubHub and SeatGeek represent a change in how Ontario is trying to address ticket resale, after slowly ramping up the law.

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.

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.