Weekly Roundup: Ticketmaster, Padel Teams and the Widening Income Gap
Airlines seek to muzzle disputes, payments system finally opens up, telcos battle over access, Edward Rogers adds to sports empire and poor Canadians fall further behind
Welcome to the newest feature here at Do Not Pass Go – a weekly round-up of news items from the world of competition, monopolies and consumer affairs that we couldn’t get to during the week, but that are important nevertheless. As with all things, we’re still in our early days so we’ll see how this goes. Thoughts, comments, criticisms are welcome!
ECONOMY & COMPETITION
The INCOME GAP between the richest Canadians and the poorest continues to grow, according to Statistics Canada. The gap – which the agency defines as the difference in the share of disposable income between households in the top 40 per cent and the bottom 40 per cent of income distribution—hit 47.5 percentage points in the third quarter of 2025, up from 46.3 percentage points in the same quarter a year earlier. Worse still, the lowest-income households – the bottom 20 per cent – were the only group that did not see an increase to their average disposable income. This does not bode well for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, one of which is to achieve income growth for the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a higher rate than the national average by 2030.
Meanwhile, Acting Commissioner of Competition Jeanne Pratt says her agency needs to keep its “foot on the gas” when it comes to fighting abuses by Canada’s large companies and trying to stem the tide of unaffordability across sectors. In her first interview since taking over last month from the COMPETITION BUREAU’S long-time head Matthew Boswell, Pratt tells BNN Bloomberg that the agency is working under a sense of urgency given the situation with affordability.
CONCERTS
You know things are bad when you’re pulling for KID ROCK. Everybody’s favourite American bad-ass continues to push against the LIVE NATION TICKETMASTER monopoly that’s responsible for the ludicrous prices concert-goers are faced with in North America. The Kidster testified before the the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee this week, stressing the need for a 10-per-cent price cap on ticket resales. The existing resale free-for-all, which Ticketmaster enables and benefits from, is serving as a catalyst for large-scale bot operations to quickly buy and resell tickets at vastly inflated prices.
On that front, SOUTH KOREA has moved to ban scalping outright, as well as online piracy, calling them the “two most intractable problems” facing the country’s cultural sector. So, fans of BTS may find it harder to illegally download the bans music, but they might also pay a bit less to see them live.
AIRLINES
In case you missed it, Canada’s airlines – including AIR CANADA, WESTJET, AIR TRANSAT and JAZZ AVIATION – want to keep their complaints resolutions with passengers secret. They’re opposing a court challenge by advocacy group Air Passenger Rights, which argues that the existing resolution system – where airlines and consumers are barred from publicly disclosing the results of complaints – is unconstitutional. In other words, if one customer’s complaint nets him a big payout, the airlines don’t want him to be able to tell other customers about it because they’ll expect the same.
GROCERIES
PRIME MINISTER MARK CARNEY this week raised the GST credit by 25 per cent while also rebranding it to the Canada Groceries and Essentials benefit. Along with a one-time 50-per-cent bonus, a family could receive nearly $1,900 this year and $1,400 each year after that for the next four years. With Parliament resuming this week, Conservative leader PIERRE POILIEVRE landed a sick burn in pointing out that Carney and his team had removed all the price tags in the backdrop of his photo op at the Ottawa grocery store where they announced the new measures. Meanwhile over here, we’re wondering if grocery CEOs aren’t just looking at this new money coming to consumers as an invitation to raise prices even more.
Meanwhile, PUBLIC GROCERY STORES – those owned or operated by government – are getting a lot of attention these days. Aaron Vansintjan, policy manager for advocacy group Food Secure Canada, joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast this week to talk about a new paper that he and some colleagues have published that puts numbers to how the concept could work in Canada.
BANKS
At long last, Canada’s payments system is finally open to newcomers, a significant improvement for anyone with a bank account or who moves money. The new “real-time rail” payment infrastructure system has launched, with five fast-rising fintech firms – WISE, KOHO, FLOAT, PARAMOUNT and BRIM – now members. Broadening this access beyond just banks, credit unions and large financial institutions is expected to speed up everything from deposits to international transfers. No more waiting five days for a cheque to clear?
TELECOM
Noted industry scion (and star of the just concluded hit Rogers v. Rogers play) EDWARD ROGERS has bought a minority interest in the Toronto Polar Bears, the only Canadian franchise in the 10-team North American Pro Padel League. The Rogers chair apparently plays the tennis-like sport and decided to add the team to his burgeoning sports empire. We’ll be delving into this empire here very shortly, stay tuned…
Elsewhere, TELUS is complaining to the CRTC that BELL has “drastically degraded” its ability to sign up new internet customers when using its rival’s network, and it wants the regulator to intervene. The two companies must provide wholesale access to their networks to competitors as part of CRTC rules that seek to increase the number of internet providers in a given market. The complaint is beyond ironic, given that these larger companies have been doing exactly the same to smaller wholesale-based internet providers since time immemorial.
BIG TECH
AMAZON has taken an axe to large parts of its business by slashing 16,000 corporate jobs and closing more than 70 Fresh and Go retail locations. The company says it’s right-sizing a workforce that swelled during the pandemic and focusing its food retail efforts on its Whole Foods chain, where it plans to add an additional 100-plus stores over the next few years. Hey, somebody has to pay for the $40 million that Amazon boss Jeff Bezos shelled out for the Melania Trump documentary that no one is lining up to see.
Following in Australia’s footsteps, FRANCE is on pace to become the second country to ban social media for kids. The measure passed the country’s national assembly with overwhelming support this week and now heads to the Senate for approval. French President Emmanuel Macron wants the ban to be in place by Sept. 1. If you listened to our recent podcast episode on Gander Social, you know that the all-Canadian social media app is about to launch with mechanisms that will also keep minors off the platform.
CHEAP POP!
There’s a battle going on over who gets to profit from Banff and Jasper. In a rare two-podcast week, we also spoke with oil tycoon and Banff ski resort owner Adam Waterous about PURSUIT, the U.S.-based company that has rolled up nearly all of the tourist attractions in the national parks – and that is driving up prices as a result. We also spoke to Pursuit, who say that the market in the parks isn’t as simple as critics make it out to be.
The ticket resale platform that Ticketmaster owns is bad for consumers, but just getting rid of it could be worse. At least with Ticketmaster owning the platform, there’s recourse if you get scammed.
Just getting rid of that platform without some ethical replacement wouldn’t get rid of bots at would be a much more dangerous place.
What’s a better solution?
Really comprehensive roundup here. The income gap stat about the bottom 20% not seeing any disposable income growth while everyone else does is pretty stark evidence of whats driving affordablity crisis. I've also noticed the Ticketmaster resale mechansim basically incentivizes scalping since they profit from secondary market too, so Kid Rock's 10% cap proposal actually adresses the root issue. The timing on Canadas real-time payments opening up is intresting given how far behind we've been.