Coldplay concert for $11,000? Uproar in India after tickets on BookMyShow were sold out and resold within minutes

New Delhi
CNN
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Fans eagerly awaiting Coldplay's return to India were shocked to see tickets being resold online for up to $11,000, prompting police to seek a statement from the show provider's managing director on the fraud allegations.

The British rock band is playing three shows in Mumbai in January as part of their hugely popular Music Of The Spheres tour, their first concerts in the country since 2016.

Ticket sales should begin on September 22nd at 12 p.m. local time with the official provider BookMyShow (BMS). But for many users, the website and app crashed due to demand.

As fans joined the virtual queue to buy tickets priced between 2,500 and 35,000 rupees ($30 to $417), they said they were behind hundreds of thousands of users.

Within minutes, tickets sold out and reappeared on other platforms for up to 960,000 rupees ($11,458), sparking anger over the purchasing process and suspicions that bots were being used to grab seats. To put that in perspective, the World Bank says India's current GDP per capita is $2,500 per year.

Amit Vyas, a lawyer and founding partner of Mumbai law firm Vertices Partners, was among fans waiting for tickets on the seller's website when he was suddenly locked out.

He filed a police report alleging that the online ticketing platform provided tickets to scalpers and third-party websites for resale on the black market.

“Not a single person I know in Mumbai and outside Mumbai – I got so many calls from friends in Delhi – no one got a ticket,” Vyas told CNN, expressing frustration that more is not being done to protect fans from bots other reseller practices.

On Monday, BookMyShow founder and CEO Ashish Hemjarani was summoned by the Economic Crimes Wing of the Mumbai Police for questioning over alleged black-marketing of tickets for the concerts, a Mumbai Police official said.

In one Statement about XBookMyShow said it has “no affiliation” with platforms for the sale or resale of tickets or with third parties “for reselling the band's performances in India” and has also lodged a complaint with the police. According to CNN affiliate News18, the complaint was related to the alleged sale of counterfeit concert tickets on certain platforms.

“Scalping is strictly condemned and punishable by law in India. “We have filed a report with the police authorities and will provide them with full support in clarifying this matter,” said the seller.

Coldplay fans told CNN that their attempts to buy tickets for the January shows at Mumbai's DY Patil Stadium left them frustrated and disappointed.

Arkatapa Basu, a 26-year-old journalist from the southern city of Bengaluru, said she was waiting behind 130,000 people waiting to buy tickets when she learned a third show had been added.

When she got on the waiting list for the third show, she discovered that there were 700,000 people waiting in front of her. “That’s when I decided to give up,” she said.

Ishaan Jhamb, a 22-year-old engineering student from Delhi, said the resold tickets were so expensive that he and his friends decided to fly nearly four hours to see the band in Abu Dhabi instead because it was more economical.

The ticket purchasing process for major concert events has often provoked anxiety among buyers around the world.

Last month, British rock band Oasis announced a reunion tour, sparking intense criticism of Ticketmaster's so-called dynamic pricing, in which companies adjust prices based on factors such as demand.

A Ticketmaster spokesperson told CNN at the time that the company does not set ticket prices. According to Ticketmaster's website, promoters and artists set prices that are either fixed or can be based on demand.

Ticketmaster also came under public scrutiny in November 2022 over its handling of the hugely popular Taylor Swift Eras Tour, for which the company said there was “historically unprecedented demand.”