The Toronto International Film Festival is using Ticketmaster to book seats this year, and even though opening night is more than a week away, tickets for high-profile films are already going for more than ten times their face value.
Festivalgoers are not happy about the high resale prices already popping up.
Opening night film “The Boy and the Heron” from Hayao Miyazaki is sold out on TIFF‘s ticketing site via Ticketmaster, but tickets are going for up to $388 Canadian ($285) on ticket reselling site Stubhub. Taika Waititi’s “Next Goal Wins” is going for even more, at $416.50 CAD on Ticketmaster.
The premiere of Sylvester Stallone’s documentary “Sly” on Sept. 15 still has tickets available directly for $88 CAD, but Ticketmaster is also reselling others for up to $178.50 CAD.
Writer and filmmaker Siddhant Adlakha brought attention to the high resale prices Monday, tweeting, “Ticketmaster is a scourge and using it as an official ticketing platform for a film festival is incredibly bizarre. It’s genuinely insane that people are allowed to buy and re-sell TIFF tickets pretty much the day they go on sale. The new Miyazaki is going for over $300 US.”
“Now they’ve come for the film festivals,” tweeted film editor Amy Duddleston, while the account @TVpartyplanner suggested a solution, “Literally all Ticketmaster has to do is make resale only possible through their platform and not allow people to sell for more than they paid.”
Even titles in ostensibly less demand such as “Youth (Spring),” a 212-minute documentary on textile workers, are selling for $53 CAD on Stubhub even though they are still available at the normal $32 CAD price on Ticketmaster.
Though TIFF has used Ticketmaster in the past, this year’s high-priced resale tickets have come under increased criticism after the ticket sales company’s high prices and technical snafus for Taylor Swift’s recent tour.
PvNew has contacted the Toronto Film Festival for comment.
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