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, no clicking, no second page.

Itemizing fees is not drip pricing

The Court drew a sharp line. Drip pricing means luring a buyer with a lower headline price, then revealing additional fees later; fees that were “hidden, concealed, shrouded or obfuscated.” Partitioned pricing simply means displaying a total as separate components.

Drip pricing is a subset of partitioned pricing: the harmful version, where sequence is used to mislead. When all components appear simultaneously, nothing is being “dripped.” The Court held that Ticketmaster’s display was a single price representation and that “ordinary purchasers are capable of basic arithmetic” when the amounts sit side by side.

The two necessary elements

The Court identified two dimensions “at the core of the drip pricing conduct”: an element of concealment and a sequential element.

  • Concealment: The fee must be “hidden, concealed, shrouded or obfuscated” from the buyer. When all price components are displayed simultaneously—even in itemized form—nothing is concealed. The Court emphasized that concealment “is the beating heart of the false or misleading representation conduct prohibited by section 52, including the drip pricing conduct.”

    If the total is “fully knowable or easily computable” from what appears on screen, there is no concealment.

     

  • Sequence: The fee must be “added” to an initial price at a later stage. The Court drew this from the French text of the statute (“frais obligatoires fixes qui s’y ajoutent”—fees “that are added”) and held it supplies the common meaning: “for something to be ‘added,’ there must be a preexisting element to which the addition will be made.” If both amounts appear at the same moment, neither is added to the other and they simply form part of a single, segmented price representation.

    The sequential element explains why below-the-fold fees (Cineplex) or fees revealed only after clicking “Add to cart” (Deane) are drip pricing, while side-by-side disclosure on the same screen is not.

Canadian courts, the Court noted, “unanimously establish that, to be prohibited, a drip pricing conduct requires a concealment of some pricing information and a sequential disclosure of such information.” The plaintiff could not cite a single case to the contrary.

No federal all-in pricing requirement

The plaintiff argued that section 74.01(1.1) effectively requires a single total price. The Court disagreed.

When Parliament enacted the drip pricing provision in 2022, Quebec, Ontario, and federal airfare rules already contained express all-in mandates. Parliament knew how to write that rule and chose not to. An all-inclusive requirement “may perhaps be a preferable option for purchasers and consumers, but it is for Parliament to decide that … But Parliament has not yet done so.”

The “general impression” test

The general impression test still applies, but its job has shifted. It now identifies what the price representation actually is, before asking whether it is misleading. The test is objective, needs no expert evidence, and looks at the whole advertisement, not a “rushed or partial reading.”

If the page gives no cue to scroll, only the opening screen’s “four corners” matter. Where pricing is clear and unambiguous, little further analysis is needed.

How this differs from Cineplex

In Cineplex, the booking fee was below the fold, invisible without scrolling or clicking, and the page design discouraged looking further. Here, every fee sat on the opening screen.

The plaintiff relied on a Court of Appeal sentence suggesting the drip pricing provision targets all “partitioned” pricing. Justice Gascon called that “unfortunate and inaccurate wording”—at best obiter—and noted it came from an expert’s testimony, not the court’s own findings.

Practical takeaways

  • The federal question is now “on how many screens, and in what order?” Itemizing fees is lawful, provided nothing is held back for a later step.
  • Audit the first screen. If a mandatory fee requires scrolling or clicking to find, that is your exposure.
  • Treat design as compliance. Font size, contrast, and position relative to the fold matter as much as the words.
  • Keep subtotals accurate and complete at every step of the flow.
  • Do not rely on “up to” language as a shield. The Court never decided whether a fee range or maximum counts as “fixed.” The protection here came from prominent display, not hedged wording.
  • Provincial and sector rules are untouched. Quebec and Ontario ticket sales laws, and federal airfare rules, still require a total price. Competition Act compliance is not compliance with those regimes.

Kuling provides welcome clarity and counterbalance to Cineplex, but it is a single Federal Court decision. An important open question remains: whether “up to” fee descriptions and per-order charges qualify as “fixed” obligatory fees.

A different layout, a smaller font, or a fee that requires any extra step to find could tip the analysis the other way. The safest reading is not that itemized pricing is always fine, but that one particular implementation survived scrutiny because of how it was designed.

If you want to know if your advertising and purchase flows comply, reach out to a member of our Advertising & Product Regulatory team.