All it took were a few minutes for Coldplay's shows to sell out in India. This success says as much about the British band's notoriety as it does about the South Asian giant. On September 22, some 13 million people glued to their smartphone or computer screen clicked frantically to get their hands on the 150,000 tickets available for Coldplay's two live shows in Bombay, scheduled for January 18 and 19, 2025, as part of the "Music of the Spheres World Tour."
BookMyShow, the platform tasked with selling these tickets, couldn't withstand such traffic and crashed, leaving many fans disappointed. Tickets promptly found their way onto the black market at much higher prices. Ticket prices that initially ranged from €22 to €380 went up tenfold, some being sold for several thousands of euros.
Fans of the English pop-rock band expressed their outrage on social media. Many accused scalpers of having used bots to bypass the online queuing system and buy multiple tickets just to resell them at a higher price. Among the disappointed fans, a lawyer named Amit Vyas went so far as to file a complaint with the Bombay police. For him, there's no doubt that BookMyShow was in cahoots with "black marketeers" to swindle the public and boost its revenues. A fraud investigation was launched, and the platform's CEO, Ashish Hemrajani, was questioned by the police on September 30.
The company asserted that it had "no association" with unauthorized resellers. "Scalping is strictly condemned and punishable by law in India," the platform said in a statement published on X. "Don't fall prey to unauthorized platforms selling fake tickets," it warned, urging fans to beware of "such scammers." BookMyShow filed a complaint and is reportedly considering canceling the Coldplay concert tickets "sold unethically," although it did not explain how it would do so. The band, for its part, scheduled a third date for January 21, which also sold out.
India and its 1.4 billion inhabitants are accustomed to demand far outstripping supply in every field. Whether it's to secure a place at a renowned university or get a civil service job, Indians are used to jostling for positions. In 2022, for example, 12.5 million people applied for 35,000 jobs in the railroad service.
It's not the first time this type of scenario has happened because of a concert in India. A few days before the Coldplay fiasco, fans of "Punjabi wave" rapper Diljit Dosanjh complained that they had suffered the same fate. Tickets for shows on his "Dil-Luminati tour" 2024 sold out on the platform Zomato Live. Almost all dates sold out within a few days. Once again, tickets quickly reappeared on resale platforms at prices well above the original prices.
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