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A Canadian appeal court has upheld a C$175,000 (€120,000) damages award against an Ontario venue after a concertgoer suffered a serious knee injury following a Toby Keith gig.
The court heard that the main exit of Toronto’s Ontario Place was unexpectedly blocked on the evening of 14 June 2016, leading plaintiff Patrick Lyng, then aged 21, and a friend to leave via a grassy hill that was “devoid of barricades or warnings”.
Canadian Underwriter reports that Lyng, who had consumed alcohol, tore his ACL after jumping from the hill – which was slippery due to heavy rain – in his flip-flops and landing awkwardly.
Lyng sued Ontario Place for compensation under the Occupier’s Liability Act in relation to the incident, with a court subsequently finding the venue 75% negligent compared to the concertgoer’s 25% in a 2022 ruling.
The 15,000-cap appealed the decision, claiming the injured fan was “the author of his own misfortune” by jumping from the hill. However, Ontario’s Court of Appeal rejected the argument.
“Ontario Place failed in its duty to take care that persons were reasonably safe while on its premises”
“The trial judge specifically found that [by] blocking the pedestrian bridge and making no reasonable effort from preventing the crowd, a number who have been drinking alcohol, from going onto that wet hazardous hill, Ontario Place failed in its duty to take care that persons were reasonably safe while on its premises,” it ruled last month.
“It is important to note that the trial judge did not find that Ontario Place had an obligation to prevent patrons from entering onto all patches of wet grass, everywhere on the premises, but pinpointed what he viewed as Ontario Place’s negligent decision to not place ‘barriers to prevent people from going down [the] slippery hill’. He concluded that it would have been a ‘simple matter to warn people to avoid that hill as it was a slip-and-fall hazard after a heavy rain’.
“The trial judge did what [the Occupiers’ Liability Act] directs him to do – he carefully considered what would have been reasonable in the circumstances. In the end he found two clear breaches: 1) the failure to erect barriers at the location where people would proceed down the hill in question, and 2) the failure to warn the crowd (i.e., by a sign) to avoid the hill.”
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Oak View Group (OVG) has unveiled plans to invest $280 million in the renovation of the FirstOntario Centre in Ontario, Canada.
Led by OVG and Hamilton Urban Precinct Entertainment Group, the revamp will see the 18,000-capacity arena that opened in 1985 transformed into a modern entertainment venue.
Upgrades to the city-owned facility include a reimagined facade, premium seating, enhanced acoustics, improved sightlines, upgraded concourses, and optimised clubs and suites and artist lounges.
The newly modernised venue will accommodate shows unable to land an available date at the Scotiabank Arena (cap. 19,800) in Toronto, which is owned by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, where Tim Leiweke, OVG Chairman & CEO, was chief executive from 2013 to 2015.
“It’s a great market as Toronto has run out space for new construction. We’re making a big bet but we feel great about it”
Live Nation will serve as the FirstOntario Centre’s booking partner and bring concerts and other live events to the city of Hamilton. Work on the facility will begin in spring 2024, and the building is expected to open in fall 2025.
“Our timing is perfect,” says Leiweke, noting that billions of dollars in construction for ten projects in Hamilton is planned for the fast-growing region. “It’s a great market as Toronto has run out space for new construction. We’re making a big bet but we feel great about it. We have a great team here in place, a lot of great companies that believe in us and we are feeling very optimistic.”
OVG recently worked with Louis Messina, promoter of the Taylor Swift tour, to sell sponsorships for the singer’s six-night run in November 2024 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.
“We already have a great infrastructure in place with a strong team up here,” says Leiweke. Besides Hamilton, Oak View Group recently completed renovations at the CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore and plans to complete work at the Co-op Live arena in the UK later this year.
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Oak View Group (OVG) is making its first foray into Canada with a brand new partnership, which will serve as the launching point for a Canadian office.
The global sports and entertainment company is partnering with Hamilton Urban Precinct Entertainment Group (HUPEG) on the redevelopment of the downtown arts and entertainment district in Hamilton, Ontario.
This will include the renovation of the FirstOntario Centre (cap. 19,000), which will be privately funded with more than CA$50 million.
Construction at the arena is anticipated to begin in the autumn of 2022 and take place over two years in two phases.
Internationally renowned arena architect BBB, who managed the renovation of Madison Square Garden in New York City, will lead the arena renovation design.
“We believe Hamilton is the perfect market to plant our first OVG Canada flag”
OVG, which has offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Philadelphia, says the deal will kickstart the company’s Canadian operations.
Tim Leiweke, CEO of OVG, and former past president of Canada’s Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment commented, “I have been very fortunate in my career to be part of the Toronto community and call Canada home. I saw first-hand the continued growth in the Toronto Metro area, and we believe Hamilton in particular, needs a venue that reflects the growth, great fans, and community thus requiring that new facilities are developed and new opportunities are created.
“We believe Hamilton is the perfect market to plant our first OVG Canada flag and will be a venue that compliments Toronto and the Scotia Bank Arena [cap. 19,800]. We think there is a need, an opportunity to transform the current arena and we are extremely excited to be partners with the City of Hamilton and HUPEG on their vision.”
OVG is also leading the redevelopment and operations of Climate Pledge Arena at Seattle Center as well as leading arena development projects for UBS Arena in Belmont Park, New York; Moody Center in Austin, Texas; New Arena in Coachella Valley, CA; and Co-op Live in Manchester, UK.
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The Ontario Festival Industry Taskforce (OFIT) is spearheading the organisation of a concert that is said to be the first major event in Canada to use rapid screening.
The event, dubbed The Long Road Back, is due to take place this month at the Casino Lac-Leamy Plaza at Lansdowne Park, Ottawa, with a performance from local Motown tribute band, The Commotions.
Attendance will be limited to 100 participants, and all spectators as well as staff, musicians and crew must prove they’ve tested negative for Covid-19 within 48 hours before the band performs.
Once at the event, attendees will be seated at tables and will be required to wear masks and adhere to social distancing throughout the event.
According to the organisers, tickets – which were priced at CA$25 and could only be purchased in groups of four – sold out in under an hour.
“As we look ahead to the summer of 2021 and beyond, establishing best practices for live music events now is critical”
“As we look ahead to the summer of 2021 and beyond, establishing best practices for live music events now is critical,” says OFIT chair Mark Monahan. “In order to produce summer and fall events, rapid Covid-19 antigen screening is needed to demonstrate live concerts can happen safely.”
The concert was originally slated for 27 March but has now been postponed after the city’s chief medical officer of health said the city will likely limit outdoor public gatherings to 25 people next week.
The organisers say the event will be rescheduled “for the earliest possible date” should restrictions be tightened.
The concert is produced in conjunction with local promoter Live DNA, the team behind Ottawa Bluesfest, the Canadian Live Music Association, Ottawa Festivals Network, and the National Arts Centre. The organisers are producing the event under the guidance of Rapid Test & Trace Canada.
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Eventbrite, the ticketing partner for Canadian rock festival Roxodus, is refunding all those who bought tickets to the event following its cancellation last week.
Roxodus organisers MF Live cancelled the festival, which was scheduled to take place from 11 to 14 July at Edenvale Airport in Ontario, due to “tremendous rainy weather” which “impacted our ability to produce the festival”.
Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Kid Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nickelback, Billy Idol and Blondie were among the acts featuring on the Roxodus bill.
“After multiple attempts to communicate and secure funds back from the abruptly-cancelled Roxodus Music Fest in Ontario, Canada, the organisers have provided no indication that they will refund ticket holders,” reads a statement issued by Eventbrite on Sunday (7 July).
“We believe attendees deserve to get their money back now, so we have set up an Eventbrite-funded Fan Relief Program [sic] to make all Roxodus ticket holders whole while we continue to aggressively pursue the return of funds from the festival’s creators.”
Eventbrite’s statement follows an announcement from MF Live co-founder Mike Dunphy, in which the Roxodus organiser denied all responsibility for refunds.
“My role at MF Live was that of talent buyer/operations. I did not sign contracts, issue cheques or control funds received from ticket sales,” wrote Dunphy.
“After multiple attempts to communicate and secure funds back from the abruptly-cancelled Roxodus Music Fest, the organisers have provided no indication that they will refund ticket holders”
“Eventbrite is the ticketing partner with whom Roxodus sold tickets. They alone have all purchaser information. Since I am not in control of financial items regarding Roxodus, I cannot communicate plans for refunds.”
Dunphy, who stated he had no involvement in decisions relating to the cancellation of the festival, also denied that he had “stolen monies as widely rumoured on social media.”
Reports state that local police had been investigating a former employee of MF Live prior to Roxodus’ cancellation. It is unclear whether the investigation has any relation to the festival.
Fellow MF Live co-founder, Fab Loranger, told reporters at Global News: “Our specific role in the entire project was to provide the funding. We invested millions of dollars. We relied on Mr Dunphy, his representations and his advice, to ensure everything was properly taken care of. It obviously wasn’t. We lost it all.”
Dunphy rejected Loranger’s statement, which he termed “incorrect”.
Ticketholders will receive refunds from Eventbrite within seven business days from 7 July. Tickets for Roxodus started at CA$129 (US$99), with camping packages costing between $219 (US$168) and $1,600 (US$1,225).
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Agent Jack Ross, the newly appointed co-head of APA in Canada, has hailed Canadian authorities’ support for music businesses as being key to the health of its thriving live music industry.
Speaking to IQ for issue 74’s Canada market report, Ross identifies the grants provided by federal, provincial and municipal governments for events where live music is a major component as a significant contributor to the success of Canada’s concert market, which at US$711m (C$907m) is the world’s seventh largest (see PwC figures from the ITY 2017).
“That support,” he says, “really makes the Canadian music business the envy of the world, quite frankly.”
“It’s robust,” agrees Jim Cressman, president of Pentiction, British Columbia-based Invictus Entertainment Group, which books and promotes 500–700 concerts per year at multiple venues. “The right artist at the right price,” says Cressman, “almost always does predictable business.”
Though no national study has yet been done on the live music industry, an economic impact analysis of the business in Ontario – Canada’s most populous province and home to the music hub of Toronto – illustrates how important it is to the Canadian economy.
“The right artist at the right price almost always does predictable business”
The Live Music Measures Up study showed that the industry was responsible for 20,000 full-time equivalent jobs in 2013 and that spending by live music companies and the tourism activity generated by music festivals together contributed just under C$1.2bn to Ontario’s gross domestic product.
While optimism was expressed by most people interviewed for the market report, the Canadian live music industry isn’t without its challenges. These include the secondary ticketing market, which the Ontario government is trying to curtail with new (albeit not universally supported) legislation, and the low value of the Canadian dollar compared to its American counterpart, which can in turn work to the advantage of homegrown artists who get paid in ‘loonies’.
“Every time we put an offer in for a US artist, a dollar is costing us C$1.35,” says Louis Thomas, president and owner of Sonic Entertainment Group, a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based concert promotion and artist management company that also owns a record label and recording studio. “That has a big impact on ticket prices, at the end of the day.”
Read the full market report, which focuses on Canada’s major promoters, venues, festivals and more, here.
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StubHub’s general manager for concerts and theatre in North America, Jeff Poirier, has penned an “open letter to fans” criticising Ontario’s abandonment of the planned ticket transparency provisions in its new Ticket Sales Act, which passed into law yesterday.
In its current form, the Ticket Sales Act caps the price of resold tickets at 150% of face value, bans ticket bots and requires business selling or reselling tickets to disclose certain information, including the capacity of the venue, the number of tickets on general on-sale and the original face-value ticket price.
It also originally required ticket sellers to disclose how many tickets are available to the public for a given event seven days before they go on sale – a provision abandoned last month following reported opposition from the concert industry. Among those believed to have pushed back against the transparency clause were Live Nation/Ticketmaster Canada and industry association Music Canada Live; according to local media, Ticketmaster’s Canadian COO, Patti-Anne Tarlton, told Ontarian parliamentarians that revealing total ticket numbers “could enable [touts] to better use bots to buy bulk tickets where they’re known to be scarce”.
Poirier disagrees, and in the open letter, published yesterday, says the stripped-back legislation will be remembered for its “unintended consequences” on ordinary ticket buyers – and push the secondary market underground.
“Today, the Ontario Liberals passed their Ticket Sales Act,” he writes. “Consultations were initially approached with the best of intentions: increase transparency on availability of tickets on the market and level the playing field so you have better access and more insight into the ticket buying process. In the end, this legislation will be known more for its unintended consequences than its protection of fans like you.
“The government has maintained proposals that set fans back and stripped important transparency requirements that could have truly benefited you”
“In its original form, the Ticket Sales Act banned the use of bots to procure tickets, required ticket businesses to disclose more information to consumers and capped the resale price of tickets. Yet the government has maintained proposals that set fans back and stripped important transparency requirements that could have truly benefited you.”
While he reiterates StubHub’s previously expressed support for banning ticket bots, Poirier cites the January 2016 study by New York attorney-general Eric Schneiderman – which found that up to 75% of tickets are being held back from the general public – as evidence that “the issues impacting ticket access are broader than just bots”, which many consider to be only a small part of wider structural issues affecting the ticketing sector. This shortage of publicly available tickets, he continues, “is one of the reasons why you see popular shows ‘sell out’ so quickly”.
“The original legislation required ticket sellers to disclose how many tickets were actually being made available for sale – a simple concept that would provide you better insight into the actual availability of tickets,” writes Poirier. “This is the very issue the proposed legislation was trying to solve. Yet, the government chose to remove this critical provision from the legislation, citing pressure from the live entertainment industry as a prevailing reason over establishing transparency for Ontario fans like you.
“At StubHub, we understand transparency is important across the entire ticket industry, not just in the resale market. You should be able to know how many tickets are available for an event, what your seats will look like and how much you’re going to pay for them. Only in that circumstance can you make a purchase that you truly feel good about.”
“You should be able to know how many tickets are available for an event, what your seats will look like and how much you’re going to pay for them”
“When it comes to price caps,” he continues, “StubHub joins the industry in opposing this measure. This proposal stands to negatively impact Ontario fans like you and Ontario-based businesses like StubHub as ticket resales are driven off platforms that have robust consumer protections. Ticket resale prices will continue to be driven by supply and demand, not by arbitrarily set price caps. The fact is, if a venue holds 20,000 fans, but 100,000 fans want to attend the performance, ticket prices will reflect that demand. If the established market rate exceeds the 50% cap established by government, those sales won’t stop or adapt to reflect the price caps – they’ll just occur at their true value through channels the government cannot regulate. It will happen on street corners where the risk of counterfeit and fraud is significant, and no guarantees are in place; or it will happen on ticket resale websites located outside of jurisdiction of the Ontario government. Either way, you and businesses that have invested in the province will be hurt.
“Consumers benefit from a competitive ticket market where transactions occur through secure channels that prioritise fans. At the same time, it is important to incentivise and encourage this ecommerce to remain right here, in Ontario.
“We have said from the onset that we believe there is a better way for the industry and for you. It’s our mission at StubHub to connect you to incredible live event experiences, and to do so safely and securely by including money back guarantees and fraud prevention measures. This legislation is a disappointment for the ticketing industry, and a disappointment for fans like you.”
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The Canadian province of Ontario has abandoned plans for legislation that would have required ticket sellers to disclose how many tickets are available to the public for a given event seven days before they go on sale.
The measure was announced last month as part of a consumer protection bill that also provides for capping the price of resold tickets at 150% of face value; banning ticket bots and prohibiting the resale of bot-bought tickets; and requiring business selling or reselling tickets to disclose information including the capacity of the venue, the number of tickets on general on-sale and the original face-value ticket price.
While those measures remain largely uncontroversial, Ontario’s Liberal party government is to drop the transparency clause under pressure from artists and the industry, reveals the Globe and Mail, concluding that the rule “would be a disincentive for musicians, particularly small and medium acts, to tour the province”.
“Revealing ticket numbers could enable touts to better use bots to buy bulk tickets where they’re known to be scarce”
While some argue a lack of transparency around the amount of tickets actually on sale is a symptom of a “broken” ticket market – “The murky nature of how many tickets are ever available to the public makes the secondary resale market an easy scapegoat when fans fail to acquire tickets on regular sale,” argues TicketNews’s Sean Burns, “only to see immediate resale options at substantially higher prices on the secondary market” – promoters and primary ticketers largely disagree, with the abandonment of the transparency measure following a concerted effort by Ticketmaster Canada and promoters’ association Music Canada Live, reports the Globe and Mail.
According to the paper, Ticketmaster’s Canadian COO, Patti-Anne Tarlton, told Ontarian parliamentarians that revealing total ticket numbers “could enable [touts] to better use bots to buy bulk tickets where they’re known to be scarce”.
A different proposal, backed by opposition parties, would force primary sellers to make at least 75% of tickets available to the public – although leaving artists and promoters with just 25% of ticket inventory would make Ontario less appealing to companies based outside the province, so is similarly unlikely to make it into law.
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Building on the potential ticket bot ban announced in October, the Canadian province of Ontario has unveiled legislation that would cap the resale price of tickets at 50% above face value.
The proposed measures on ticket touting form part of a broader bill, the Strengthening Protection for Ontario Consumers Act, and would, if passed, also criminalise the use of ticket bots; bar the sale of tickets purchased using bots; and require business selling or reselling tickets to disclose information including the capacity of the venue, the number of tickets on general on-sale and the original face-value ticket price.
“Stronger rules for buying and selling tickets will help give fans a fair shot”
“Stronger rules for buying and selling tickets will help give fans a fair shot at getting music, sports or theatre tickets,” says Ontario attorney-general Yasir Naqvi. “Our proposed changes will ban bots and excessive mark ups, prevent fraud and provide more information in the ticket industry. We are putting fans first by making the industry more transparent and tickets more affordable.”
“I am pleased to introduce proposed legislation that will provide consumers with the protection they deserve when making significant purchases, like a new home, a dream vacation or concert tickets,” comments Tracy MacCharles (pictured), the province’s minister of government and consumer services. “Building a fair, safe and informed marketplace is a key priority of this government. We are committed to strengthening consumer protection and making it work better for everyone.”
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The Earl of Whitchurch, the Canadian pub currently bidding to break the Guinness World Record for the longest concert by multiple artists, has just broken another record in the process: for the longest show live-streamed on the internet.
The pub, in Stouffville, Ontario, breaks a record currently held by Touchdowns Bar and Grill in Mississauga, also in Ontario.
In an email to Alan Cross, Kevin Ker, the organiser of the record attempt, explains:
“Things are fantastic! I feel like I’ve been awake for 10 days straight, fuelled by the incredible energy of this event. Everyone who walks in the door can feel it.
“We have raised close to [C]$50,000 for charity. It’s absolutely mind-blowing. I could’ve have never imagined how successful this would become.
“We surpassed the world record for the longest live-streamed concert on Saturday Morning at 8am. It was a quick announcement, followed by a quick round of high-fives/hugs than back to business as usual.
Every single night has seen a line-up at the door. Stouffville has never seen anything like this. On Saturday, the mayor and his group couldn’t get in as we were at capacity.”
Ker adds that the Earl of Whitchurch’s bid now has an end point – 2 April – following the withdrawal of a rival attempt in Michigan. “The competition with Detroit has ended and we have a clear target,” he explains. “As far as we are understand, they officially stopped at 5pm last night with a text from the organiser that read: ‘Oh, Canada… my fingers are tired.'”
A live broadcast of the event can be viewed on YouTube above.
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