The newly minted Winnipeg Jets, which has taken a decidedly anti-broker stance since the team moved to the city in the spring, is launching its own ticket resale site.
Once completed, the new site will be part of the team’s official Web portal and will allow season ticket holders to resell tickets for face value. Like other National Hockey League team resale sites, the Jets’ destination will be powered by Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange, and it is expected to be up and running next month before the team starts preseason games.
Only the team’s 13,000 season ticket holders will be allowed to resell whatever tickets they cannot use, but anyone can buy them. The Jets will charge a processing fee for all transactions, but the amount has not yet been set. Ticket resale in the Province of Manitoba is prohibited above face value, a law that the team will expect fans to adhere to.
Not so fast, according to Mario Livich, spokesperson for the Canadian Ticket Brokers Association (CTBA).
“The Jets will not be able to control nor dominate resale activity with the current ticket resale legislation in Manitoba which prohibits selling tickets above face value,” Livich, who is also the owner of Vancouver-based ShowTime Tickets, told TicketNews. “Consumers will continue buying high demand Jets tickets at market prices from brokers.”
Depending on how much the team decides to charge per transaction, fans who resell their tickets also might automatically take a loss on the sale. Face value does not include the original convenience, processing or other fees that were added during the initial sale, so the seller may lose that money. In addition, with another transaction fee tacked on, the seller stands to possibly lose even more money. If or how the team might address this has not yet been disclosed.
Livich said the CTBA supports a “free and open marketplace” for ticket resale, “which best serves consumers.” Team officials claim that they had consumers in mind when they decided to create the resale site, because they wanted a safe and secure place where their fans could resell tickets.
“Ticket resale restrictions in places like Manitoba have been proven to hurt the public with higher ticket prices and resale activity being forced underground and to other provinces or states,” Livich said.
Mitch Brennan, ticket administrator for the Jets’ ownership group, True North Sports & Entertainment, told the Winnipeg Free Press that while the resale site will not stop brokers from selling tickets, the team will cancel the tickets of anyone they believe is abusing the system.
“The main goal is to provide a safe and authorized venue for people to resell their tickets on the secondary market,” Brennan said. “We know [scalping is] happening, everybody knows it’s happening. We want to provide an avenue where they know the tickets are authentic, there’s no possibility of fraud and they’re adhering to the laws of the province.”
