Resale of concert tickets illegal in India after Coldplay-BookMyShow row
BookMyShow has launched a police investigation against ‘third party’ apps that allowed people and dealers to sell Coldplay concert tickets at inflated prices – going up to Rs 7.7 lakh for a ticket originally priced at Rs 12,500.
In short
- BookMyShow is facing severe criticism for poorly managing Coldplay concert ticket sales.
- This happened after the tickets were sold out and were available at many times higher prices on resale sites
- Resale of tickets is illegal under Maharashtra law
“Okay. So, we didn’t get tickets,” says Mumbai-based digital creator Simone Khambatta. The tickets she was referring to were for Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour concert in Mumbai in January 2025, and according to her, she couldn’t secure them even after “sitting in one place” for three hours with five devices.
“I was on BookMyShow since 11.45am with two devices while my husband had three devices. All my friends were trying too. But the strange thing is that even before the tickets were officially sold out on BookMyShow, Viagogo had already started selling the tickets,” she said. [the ticket re-selling platform] “We were already selling tickets at five times the price,” he wrote on Instagram. “How were they able to get thousands of tickets and sell them at such ridiculous prices?”
Simone wasn’t the only one who had this experience. In fact, many people who booked tickets for Coldplay had the same experience.
cold shit
When BookMyShow announced on September 20 that the band was returning to India after nine years, many of us were overjoyed. For some, it was a chance to refresh ourselves after missing out on Diljit Dosanjh’s tour tickets, which were sold out within minutes on Zomato.
However, everyone hoping to get Coldplay tickets knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Experience and social media buzz have taught them that tickets can disappear in a matter of moments. Like Simone, 13 million Indians flocked to BookMyShow, crashing the platform and raising two big questions that have been dominating social media ever since.
- First of all, how did resellers grab hundreds of tickets and resell them? (if it is legal, prima facie) At highly inflated prices within a matter of minutes?
- Second, why monopoly in managing ticket sales?
Let us look at each question.
Is reselling really illegal in India?
Let’s start from the very beginning.
Reselling websites were already facing criticism and public scrutiny after tickets for Diljit’s concert sold out in a matter of minutes, but later reappeared on resale sites like Viagogo and Gigsburg at three times the price. There were also listings on Indian platforms like TicketTransfer and TakeMyTickets, and some tickets are now selling for up to Rs 40,000.
A few days later, when the same situation happened with Coldplay, public outrage grew, especially on BookMyShow, where tickets were sold on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. However, according to people who shared their experiences on social media, the ‘queue’ was not the same for everyone, as two people logging in at the same time were given very different queue numbers.
We found some comments in BookMyShow’s Instagram comments section. Take a look:
Two days after the incident, on September 25, BookMyShow filed a police complaint against ‘third party’ apps that allowed people and dealers to sell tickets at inflated prices – going up to Rs 7.7 lakh for a ticket originally priced at Rs 12,500.
The disappointment grew further when companies such as Spreh, UrbanMatch, WYLD and Finderbridge began offering free Coldplay concert tickets on social media.
@tooshietrash commented on BookMyShow’s Instagram, “What’s your explanation for the sheer number of giveaways being conducted by brands? How come so many brands are conducting mass giveaways? This clearly points to early access.”
Now, the question of the hour is: Is it illegal to resell or hike up the price of tickets in India? And what can be done for those who try to get tickets but fail?
Abhinav Srivastava, co-founding partner of GSL Chambers and advocate-on-record at the Supreme Court of India, points out that there is no specific central law in India prohibiting the reselling of tickets at a higher price. However, if the seller specifies that the tickets are ‘not transferable’, they can take legal action against the dealer or the person reselling them.
However, in the case of Coldplay, reselling tickets is illegal. Under the Maharashtra Entertainment Act, reselling tickets at inflated prices is prohibited, Srivastava said. However, this law does not apply to concerts held in Delhi or other states.
Abhinav further explains that reselling could have been prevented if BookMyShow had made the tickets non-transferable, which was not the case according to BookMyShow’s terms and conditions. The tickets are ‘non-refundable without exception’ but are transferable as well.
The same logic applies to other concerts including Diljit’s Dil-Luminati tour, which means you can resell the tickets as neither the reseller (Zomato) nor the state stops you from doing so.
Now, let’s look at our second question.
Monopoly: The Anti-Hero
Swifties were in the same frenzy in November 2022 as Indian Coldplay fans are right now. The incident happened when Ticketmaster, an American ticket sales and distribution company, cancelled all planned ticket sales to the public for Taylor Swift’s US tour in 2023 after 3.5 billion ticket requests from fans, bots, and scalpers overwhelmed the website with record demand.
The company blamed this on a ‘technical issue’ and while some people were able to get tickets, others were not so successful. This again led to higher prices for Eras Tour concert tickets on other third-party reselling websites.
So what did the Swifties do next? He dragged the company to court and filed a 33-page complaint against Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, claiming it had a “monopoly over the primary and secondary markets, and accused it of engaging in deceptive behavior and various antitrust violations, including price discrimination and price fixing”.
The company also faced criticism from members of the US Congress, who accused the company of having an “uncontrolled monopoly”.
Today, in India, BookMyShow also has a similar borderline monopoly, which cannot be a good sign. After all, the basic rules of economics state that “monopoly is an economic situation that occurs when a company faces no competition in a market or industry and can set its own prices without any oversight. Some types of monopolies occur naturally while others are created when a company takes deliberate action through legal or illegal means.”
