Supreme Court Denies Appeal in Ticketmaster and Live Nation ‘Ticket Bot’ Case

The appeal made by Ticketmaster and Live Nation, facing class-action lawsuits in multiple provinces for allegedly profiting from third-party ticket reselling, has been dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The allegations suggest that Ticketmaster enabled mass ticket scalping in violation of its own terms of use and policy by allowing resellers to utilize automated “ticket bots” to acquire event tickets in excess of the limits it sets for individual buyers.

One of the five class-action lawsuits filed against the companies in 2018 after media coverage of Ticketmaster’s activities in the secondary ticket market originated in British Columbia.

The British Columbia class asserts that Ticketmaster wrongfully profited by facilitating ticket reselling while misleadingly claiming that the public would have a “fair opportunity” to purchase tickets at face value instead of inflated prices.

In its Supreme Court submissions, Ticketmaster contended that its purchase policy and terms of use were agreements with individuals using its website to buy tickets, not “representations” to the general public.

The company argued that the B.C. Court of Appeal erred in permitting the class-action to proceed by transforming a “consumer contract into a promise to a market at-large.”

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