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ARTICLE · 11 OCTOBER 2026

Drip Pricing After Kuling v Ticketmaster: What It Means For Your Purchase Flows

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A Federal Court ruling clarifies that displaying itemized fees on the same screen does not constitute drip pricing under Canada's Competition Act, provided all mandatory charges are visible simultaneously in legible type. The decision establishes that while concealment and sequential disclosure trigger the prohibition, transparent partitioned pricing remains lawful, leaving businesses to navigate the line between compliant fee disclosure and misleading price representations.

CanadaConsumer Protection
René Bissonnette
René Bissonnette
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Kuling v Ticketmaster (2026 FC 1185), decided September 22, 2026 by Justice Gascon, is a critically important judicial interpretation of the Competition Act’s drip pricing provisions. The bottom line: itemizing fees is not drip pricing, provided every mandatory charge is clearly visible on the same screen, at the same time, in legible type. There is no federal requirement to display a single all-in price.

What happened

Ticketmaster adds non-optional fees to ticket face values. The plaintiff bought two comedy show tickets at CA$74.50 each, paying CA$190.00 in total. By the certification hearing, her claim had narrowed to the CA$2.50 Order Processing Fee (under 2% of her total).

Crucially, the per-ticket price on the event page already bundled the service fee, facility charge, and taxes. The Order Processing Fee was the only charge not folded in. It appeared in bold black type on the same screen, immediately above the ticket price, in a message of fewer than 15 words. No scrolling,

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