Competition Tribunal Does Big Box Office: Insights From The Cineplex Drip Pricing Decision

Introduction

On October 2, 2024, the Competition Tribunal issued a decision in Commissioner of Competition v. Cineplex Inc., marking the first enforcement of the "drip pricing" provisions introduced by the amendments to Canada's Competition Act (the "Act"). We have previously written about the Cineplex case here, and the amendments to the misleading advertising provisions here.

The Tribunal examined Cineplex's online pricing representations for movie tickets, siding with the Commissioner in finding that Cineplex violated both the general misleading representations provisions and the newly introduced "drip pricing" provisions. Further, the Tribunal ordered Cineplex to pay a blockbuster administrative monetary penalty ("AMP") of C$38.9 million, the highest AMP imposed to date under the Act.