Coldplay Tickets Resell for Lakhs: Is BookMyShow the Ticketmaster of India?

The recent frenzy over Coldplay's upcoming concert in India has once again brought to light a serious issue within the country's ticketing industry: scalping.

Tickets for Coldplay's January 2025 performances in Mumbai were snatched up almost immediately after going live on BookMyShow, leaving thousands of fans frustrated as tickets resurfaced on resale platforms at prices many times their original value. This debacle has raised several key questions: Why is this happening, and who is to blame?

BookMyShow was the exclusive ticketing partner for Coldplay’s India tour, offering tickets priced between ₹2,500 and ₹35,000. However, as soon as the sale went live, their website and app faced a technical meltdown, with over 1.3 crore people logging on simultaneously​. This led to some fans being stuck in virtual queues for hours, while tickets seemingly vanished in minutes.

Almost immediately after the official sale, tickets were listed on third-party resale platforms like Viagogo at vastly inflated prices. For instance, tickets that originally cost ₹12,500 were resold for as much as ₹3.36 lakh​; a staggering 2,700% increase​!

Despite BookMyShow’s warnings about buying from unauthorized resellers, the prevalence of these inflated listings fueled speculation about the platform's complicity. Fans on social media questioned how resellers could obtain so many tickets in the first place and why scalping continues to thrive without significant regulation​.

One of the core issues in this crisis is the lack of a unified law addressing ticket scalping in India. While some state laws, such as the Maharashtra Entertainment Act, prohibit the resale of tickets at inflated prices, this regulation does not apply uniformly across the country. The situation is further complicated by the fact that BookMyShow’s terms and conditions do not always classify tickets as “non-transferable,” allowing for resale under certain conditions​.

Without stricter regulations or enforcement, scalpers have found loopholes to manipulate the system. Automated bots are often used to bulk-buy tickets within seconds, creating artificial scarcity and driving up prices on the secondary market​.

At the heart of this issue is BookMyShow's dominant position in the Indian ticketing market. With a 37% stake owned by Reliance Industries through its subsidiary Network18, BookMyShow holds a 75% market share controlling a vast majority of movie, concert, and event ticketing in the country​. This setup bears a striking resemblance to the monopolistic practices of Ticketmaster in the United States, which controls over 80% of live concert ticketing through its parent company, Live Nation​.

Ticketmaster has been at the center of global criticism for years, accused of enabling scalping and exploiting its dominant market position. In 2022, during the presale for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour,” the Ticketmaster platform crashed due to overwhelming demand, leaving many fans without tickets and exacerbating scalping issues​.

The situation in India is eerily similar, with BookMyShow’s market control limiting competition and creating conditions where scalping thrives.

Reliance's backing of BookMyShow through Network18 gives it a dual role in both content creation (via its investments in festivals like Lollapalooza India) and content distribution (through BookMyShow). This integrated control over both sides of the market allows Reliance to replicate a model seen with Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation, which has been accused of leveraging its control over venues and ticketing to further entrench its monopoly​.

While BookMyShow has distanced itself from the scalping scandal, filing police complaints against unauthorized resellers​, it is clear that the platform’s market dominance is a key factor in perpetuating these problems. There is a growing need for stricter laws and better technology to prevent bulk-buying and scalping. Some countries, like the United States, have begun to explore legal actions against monopolistic ticketing platforms.

India could follow suit by introducing centralized anti-scalping legislation and promoting competition within the ticketing market

The Coldplay ticketing crisis is a wake-up call for India’s live events industry. Fans should not have to face exorbitant prices and technical hurdles just to attend a concert. Unless BookMyShow and other major platforms take meaningful steps to address these issues, scalping will continue to thrive, and consumer trust will erode further.