With a new year comes a new wave of concerts, and Canadian fans are in for a treat as 2026 already has a stack of highly anticipated concert tours heading up north. An A-list lineup of artists, including Olivia Dean, Zara Larsson, Ariana Grande, BTS and Bruno Mars, is set to perform in major Canadian cities, including Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, later this year.
Unfortunately, the limited Canadian dates listed in each tour schedule also mean preparing for yet another year of brutal ticket-buying battles. The stakes are especially high for artists like Grande and Mars, who will be making their first touring appearances in over five years.
Snagging a ticket to a big-name artist has never been an easy task. However, more recent ticket sales have brought more tears than triumphs for concertgoers, as presales are becoming less of an exclusive fan benefit and more of a mandatory step in the rigorous ticket-buying process.
A blog post from global ticket-selling platform Ticketmaster notes that artists and their teams arrange presales to grant legitimate fans early access to tickets before the general public. However, this fan-forward ticketing model has only left concertgoers competing in a larger pool of ticket buyers.
As seen with Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Ticketmaster reported that over 3.5 million people signed up for the pop artist’s verified fan presales scheduled on Nov. 15, 2022. In an interview with the Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC), Greg Maffei, the former board chairman of the entertainment company Live Nation, said the ticketing site was open to 1.5 million fans who were lucky enough to receive a presale code. However, he said over 14 million participants, including bots, entered the site when Swift’s presale opened.
The statement from Ticketmaster noted the concert’s high demand and bot attacks that triggered site crashes, technical glitches, and prolonged queue wait times, resulting in some fans with verified codes losing tickets they had already added to their cart. This overwhelming demand during Swift’s presale led Ticketmaster to cancel the general on-sale planned for Nov. 18, 2022. The cancellation left many fans empty-handed and without a second chance to claim their golden ticket to see Swift perform live, at least for a reasonable price.
On the other hand, today’s general sales for artists such as Sabrina Carpenter seem unreliable compared to presales, as there are often few tickets available for big-name concerts. Back in 2024, a fan in line for the general sale of Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet Tour shared on X (formerly Twitter) how tickets to the singer’s show in Brooklyn, New York, already sold out despite there being only 157 people ahead in line. A similar situation occurred recently when another X user posted that tickets to one of Grande’s upcoming shows in London, England, sold out instantly during the general sale before they could purchase, even though their position in line was just over 1,200.
However, without the option of a general sale, fans still seeking tickets may have no choice but to resort to third-party resale sites such as StubHub and SeatGeek. For concertgoers, this ticket-buying option carries hope, but it also holds a high risk of financial loss. Aside from the risk of purchasing fake tickets, a major issue with buying tickets through reseller sites is inflated prices.
In Ontario, there is no longer a cap on ticket resale prices, as the provincial government under Premier Doug Ford revoked it from the Ontario Ticket Sales Act in 2019. Before this policy adjustment, resellers were only allowed to raise resale ticket prices by at most 50 per cent over the original face value. Now, they have the power to sell tickets at any price, as low or high as they wish.
According to a 2023 ticket resale study conducted by the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), there have been multiple instances of tickets being resold for up to 10 times the original price. Fans saw this reflected in Swift’s tour tickets, as CBC reported that presale prices for general admission ranged from $49 to $499 American, but the tickets listed for resale soared to $2,000 or more.
A 2022 survey from LendingTree found 47 per cent of 2,000 concert attendees in the United States will spend between $100 and $499 on tickets, with only 32 per cent spending more than $500 to grab a seat. The steep resale prices make tickets beyond the reach of the average concertgoer.
Given the small pile of tickets that appear to be set aside for general sales and the sky-high resale prices, the best bet for fans to secure a seat for under $1,000 is to roll the dice on presales. Unfortunately, this has led to more congestion in presale lines, with some fans waiting in queues of 10,000 to 100,000 people.
For Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Tour, fans reported being stuck in presale lines with over 50,000 people and others in queues above 90,000. More recently, an X user posted they were waiting in line behind 138,000 people during the presale for Bruno Mars’ Romantic Tour, which reportedly broke the record for selling 2.1 million tickets in one day.
With how easy it is to sign up for a presale, especially if no special codes are needed to unlock desired tickets, this ticketing system, designed to put fans first, can easily transform into a general sale where fans and potential resellers are placed in the same improbable lottery.
To boost concert accessibility and fan trust, many artists have taken steps to help more fans secure tickets despite long queues. This includes adding more shows, as seen with Mars, who added over 30 new shows to his tour schedule after massive demand. Other artists, like Chappell Roan, have also moved their concerts to larger venues to accommodate a larger audience, improving the odds of available seating for fans farther back in the queue.
As presales are shaping up to become the new general sale, given the high demand and fast sell-outs, greater efforts are needed from artists and ticketing platforms to prioritize real fans over those looking to profit at the expense of music lovers. Only by keeping tickets within reach of concertgoers can artist-fan relationships remain strong.