I think that they don't need to enact a new law because this could be considered to be "predatory pricing" which is already illegal in several Western countries. If the scalpers' prices are considered predatory, then they can fall under the same law that prohibits the scalping of event tickets.
There are several Western countries that already have laws in place for this kind of thing that would just need to be broadened to cover this. Scalping laws started with the re-selling of tickets far above the face value (which is the same as an MSRP).
Australia:
"Depending on the ticketing body's conditions of sale, tickets may be voided if they are resold for a profit. This is so with Ticketek tickets (Ticketek is an Australian-based ticketing company). Efforts to clamp down on ticket resale have included labeling tickets with the name or a photograph of the buyer, and banning people without tickets from the vicinity of the event to prevent the purchase of secondary market tickets.
In Australia, the secondary ticket market has been put under much scrutiny in the past few years as ticket scalpers dominated the resale ticket market. Scalpers would purchase tickets in bulk from the promoter hoping that the tickets would sell out causing an increase in demand for tickets and thus an increase in the ticket price. This caused event promoters to put restrictions on the number of tickets that can be purchased in one transaction, which has greatly reduced unfair ticket pricing. After many complaints from the community and event promoters, the DFT (Department of Fair Trading) and CCAAC (Commonwealth Consumer Affairs Advisory Council) conducted a survey discussing scalping issues and released The Ticket Scalping Issue Paper for NSW.
In Victoria, some events are declared as "major events" and protected by the Major Events Act 2009."
- So, in Australia, there's already a precedent for selling items to the public with predatory pricing.
Canada:
"Quebec put into law "Bill 25" in June 2012, making it illegal for ticket brokers to resell a ticket for more than the face value of the ticket without first obtaining permission from the ticket's original vendor. Brokers reselling tickets are required to inform consumers the tickets are being resold and must tell consumers the name of the ticket's original vendor and the original face value price. The penalty to violating the law includes fines of $1,000 to $2,000 for the first offense, and as much as $200,000 for repeated violations.
In Ontario, re-selling the tickets above face value is prohibited by the Ticket Speculation Act and is punishable by a fine of $5,000 for an individual (including those buying the tickets above face) or $50,000 for a corporation.
Effective July 1, 2015, in an effort to protect consumers from purchasing fraudulent tickets, Ontario created an exemption under the Ticket Speculation Act to:
- Enable official ticket sellers to authenticate tickets that are being resold
- Permit tickets to be resold above face value in circumstances where tickets are authenticated or have a money-back guarantee
- Allow tickets to be resold at a price that includes any service fees paid when the ticket was first purchased.
Following an announcement in 2016 that
The Tragically Hip's lead singer
Gord Downie had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, the band held the
Man Machine Poem Tour. Ticket re-sellers reportedly purchased two-thirds of all available tickets, to capitalize on public demand. As a result, in 2017, Ontario announced legislation to attempt to crack down on scalper bots."
- Canada can also easily broaden the definition of anti-scalping laws to include any and all consumer goods.
United Kingdom:
"In the
United Kingdom resale of football tickets is illegal under section 166 of the
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 unless the resale is authorized by the organizer of the match. Secondary ticketing market
StubHub have signed partnership agreements with
Sunderland and
Everton for 2012/13 season, whilst competitor
viagogo hold partnerships with
Chelsea and other clubs.
Other than in the case of football tickets, there is no legal restriction against reselling tickets in the UK,
although individual organisations (like Wimbledon) may prohibit it.
In July 2016, several prominent music managers in the UK including Ian McAndrew, Harry Magee, Brian Message and Adam Tudhope came together to fund a new initiative called the FanFair Alliance, to work towards tackling the issue of 'industrial-scale online ticket touting'."
- In the UK, the manufacturers themselves can formally forbid the scalping of their products with the backing of the law.
Now, I don't know what the situation is in some countries but I do know that in Canada and the UK, the fact that ticket prices are protected but nothing else is would actually be considered illegal. Since the laws have been in place for so long and are considered to be beneficial to the public the odds of them being struck down is essentially zero. What would
defintiely happen if the laws were to be challanged is that all protections for event tickets would automatically extend to cover
any and all products sold to the general public.
Event tickets are, at their core, just another product to be sold for money. Because of this truth, I would consider it to be 99.9% likely that the Supreme Courts of Canada and the UK would both broaden the protections to cover any and and all pricing that is artificially inflated in a predatory manner on goods sold to the public, not just event tickets.
The benefit to the public would be so great as to be incalculable. Moreover, the UK still has significant influence on the laws in many Commonwealth nations around the world. Commonwealth nations may invoke UK law as valid precedent in their own legal systems so this could spread like wildfire around the world.
THAT is how it could and would be enacted.
en.wikipedia.org
