Supreme Court won’t hear Ticketmaster, Live Nation ‘ticket bot’ appeal

The Supreme Court of Canada has declined to listen to an enchantment by Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which face class-action lawsuits in a number of provinces for allegedly benefiting from third-party ticket reselling. 

The case stems from allegations Ticketmaster facilitated mass ticket scalping in breach of its personal phrases of use and coverage, permitting resellers to make use of automated “ticket bots” to scoop up occasion tickets past limits it imposes on particular person patrons. 

The class-action lawsuit filed in B.C. was one in every of 5 launched towards the businesses in 2018 after media experiences about Ticketmaster’s exercise within the secondary ticket market. 

The Toronto Star and the CBC printed tales about an undercover investigation of Ticketmaster’s pitch to so-called “ticket resellers” at a conference in Las Vegas in the summertime of 2018. 

In a 2023 ruling from the B.C. Court of Appeal, the panel of judges laid out the background of what spurred the lawsuits in B.C., Ontario, Saskatchewan and Quebec. 

At the centre of the following controversy was Ticketmaster’s pitch to skilled scalpers on using Tradedesk, a list software program product utilized by resellers to “validate and manage” tickets they promote on the corporate’s web site. 

The media experiences “suggested” that the corporate was touting the software program to ticket resellers as a way of facilitating “mass scalping,” which appeared to violate the Ticketmaster web site’s phrases of use. 

In B.C., lead plaintiff David Gomel claims he paid about US$437 for tickets to a Bruno Mars live performance in Vancouver scheduled for July 2017.

Gomel purchased the tickets from StubHub, a secondary vendor of occasion tickets that competes with Ticketmaster. 

The lawsuits hinge, partially, on claims of a “general inflationary effect” on the secondary marketplace for tickets, forcing folks to pay greater than face worth, in violation of client safety laws and the Competition Act. 

The class in British Columbia claims Ticketmaster wrongfully profited by facilitating ticket reselling, whereas falsely claiming that members of the general public would have a “fair opportunity” to purchase tickets at their face worth quite than at inflated markups. 

In its submissions to the Supreme Court of Canada, Ticketmaster argued that its buy coverage and phrases of use had been agreements with people who used the corporate’s web site to purchase tickets, quite than “representations” to the general public at-large. 

The firm claimed the B.C. Court of Appeal bought it fallacious when it allowed the class-action to maneuver ahead by turning a “consumer contract into a promise to a market at-large.” 

Ticketmaster claimed in its Supreme Court of Canada submissions that the lawsuits it faces “have the potential to impact every business operating an e-commerce platform in Canada by vastly enlarging the kinds of claims they may face.” 

The firm claimed that listening to its enchantment would give the excessive courtroom “an opportunity to provide guidance on whether website terms of use are a sufficient factual basis for claims of misrepresentation to the public.” 

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the corporate’s request to listen to the enchantment, upholding the B.C. Court of Appeal’s July 2023 ruling. 

The firm’s lawyer, the B.C. regulation agency representing the category and lead plaintiff David Gomel didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.