A Canadian federal judge has dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit targeting Ticketmaster’s fee disclosures, ruling that the company’s practice of displaying order processing fees alongside advertised ticket prices does not violate federal drip-pricing laws.
In a Sept. 22 decision, Federal Court Justice Denis Gascon rejected allegations that Ticketmaster’s separately displayed order processing fee breached Canada’s Competition Act. The court concluded that disclosing mandatory charges simultaneously with an advertised price is lawful, drawing a legal line between prohibited drip pricing—where fees are concealed until later in the checkout process—and partitioned or segmented pricing, where charges are presented together in plain sight.
The ruling in Kuling v. Ticketmaster L.L.C., 2026 FC 1185, marks a notable legal victory for the ticketing giant in Canada, though it does not exempt ticket sellers from stricter provincial regulations that mandate all-inclusive pricing.
The legal challenge began following a November 2023 ticket purchase by Kamaria Kuling, who bought two comedy show tickets through Ticketmaster. Each ticket carried a face value of CA$74.50, totaling CA$149. After adding a CA$29.50 service fee, a CA$9 facility charge, and a CA$2.50 order processing fee, the final cost reached CA$190.
Kuling filed suit in January 2024, arguing that the pricing structure violated the Competition Act because tickets could not be purchased at the initially displayed rates without incurring mandatory extra fees. The proposed class action sought damages for Canadian consumers who purchased tickets online and paid an order processing fee on or after June 23, 2022.
Although the initial complaint challenged service fees, facility charges, delivery fees, and order processing charges, Kuling’s legal counsel abruptly narrowed the case on Jan. 13, 2025—just one day before the scheduled certification hearing—by abandoning all challenges except the CA$2.50 order processing charge.
Examining screenshots of the platform’s purchasing interface, Justice Gascon noted that Ticketmaster’s event pages already integrated service fees, facility charges, and taxes into individual ticket prices. The order processing fee appeared differently, disclosed via a bold text notice near the top of the event page immediately above the advertised price without requiring customers to scroll or search through fine print. The total order price appeared after selection and before checkout.
“Both the Order Processing Fee and the face value price for the tickets are displayed simultaneously, in close proximity to one another and in plain sight,” Gascon wrote, adding that ordinary purchasers are capable of basic arithmetic to calculate totals.
The court distinguished Ticketmaster’s practices from a separate Canadian drip-pricing case involving Cineplex, where the Competition Tribunal found the cinema chain violated the law by advertising movie ticket prices without adequately disclosing a mandatory online booking fee until later in the transaction steps.
Gascon also addressed amendments to the federal Competition Act enacted in 2022, which prohibit drip pricing by advertising unattainable prices due to concealed mandatory charges. The court determined that partitioned pricing involving simultaneous disclosure does not breach the statute, noting that the French and English versions of the legislation both support the interpretation that prohibited drip pricing relies on sequential fee additions.
While rejecting the argument that federal law requires all-inclusive pricing, the court pointed out that provincial statutes remain unaffected. Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act and Ontario’s Ticket Sales Act explicitly require advertised prices to include mandatory charges, demonstrating that lawmakers know how to mandate all-inclusive pricing when intended.
Justice Gascon ultimately dismissed the certification motion after finding the claims had no reasonable prospect of success. The judge also criticized the plaintiff’s attorneys for their last-minute abandonment of most allegations, though he declined Ticketmaster’s request for CA$20,000 in legal costs, citing standard presumptions in federal class proceedings.
Ticketmaster has previously faced major regulatory actions in Canada, including a CA$4.5 million settlement in 2019 to resolve a Competition Bureau investigation into drip pricing, and a CA$6 million class-action settlement approved in January 2025 regarding 2018 ticket sales. The September 2026 ruling addresses separate, more recent purchasing practices and does not alter those prior resolutions.
