Many fans were left disappointed after they were unable to get tickets to see British rock band Coldplay play live in India, marking their first official tour in the country. The band is set to perform on 18, 19 and 21 January 2025 in Navi Mumbai's DY Patil Stadium.
While social media users fretted over their spot in the queue as they camped on ticketing platform BookMyShow's website, others claimed that reselling websites—such as Viagogo and StubHub—had already begun selling tickets before the platform ran out of them.
Many fans expressed their frustration,
(Source: X/Screenshot)
The reselling platforms, as on 24 September, have inflated the prices of these tickets by ten to 20 times the original price at which they were available.
For instance, the cheapest tickets, priced at ₹2,500, are currently being sold for ₹48,640 each.
(Swipe to view both tickets.)
The concert's ticket prices.
(Source: BookMyShow/Altered by The Quint)
Social media platforms, too, are inundated with people selling concert tickets at higher rates, prompting BookMyShow to issue a statement about reselling, also known as scalping, warning people that tickets bought from "unauthourised sources will be at the risk of the consumer, and can turn out to be fake tickets."
A simple search for 'Coldplay tickets Mumbai' on any of these platforms will lead you to an ample amount of posts selling these tickets.
But Can You Trust Them?
Probably not. As one Reddit user noted on the band's subreddit, they "got scammed by (their) own stupidity."
A fan spoke about their experience of getting scammed.
(Source: Reddit/Screenshot)
Similar to this user's experience, we saw many accounts, trying to resell these tickets share the same screenshot of a booking confirmation, claiming that the tickets were theirs to sell.
Many social media users shared a screenshot of the same ticket.
(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)
The concert also found itself as a target of misinformation, when, amid the chaos of attempting to secure tickets, a screenshot of a fake X post did the rounds, claiming that the Coldplay had added more shows in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
A fabricated X post went viral amid the booking chaos.
(Source: WhatsApp)
However, the band's website does not list Ahmedabad as one of its tour stops.
Who Is Selling These Tickets?
Scalpers are selling them on resale websites, such as Viagogo, which is known as a platform where people can buy resold tickets.
However, just about anyone with a credit card can list their tickets for sale, according to the website's support page.
It is easy to list tickets for sale.
(Source: Viagogo/Screenshot)
StubHub, too, has an identical guide for listing tickets for sale.
StubHub's process is identical to Viagogo.
(Source: Stubhub/Screenshot)
When this reporter attempted to "sell" their tickets, the platform offered up a highly inflated price to sell these fictitious tickets at, suggesting an absurdly high selling price for tickets worth ₹12,500.
StubHub suggested we sell our fake tickets for extremely high prices.
(Source: Stubhub/Screenshot)
Apart from credit card verification, we did not have to provide any evidence that we had a legitimate ticket for Coldplay's India tour to list as sellers.
On social media, we came across many X accounts selling tickets as well.
When we looked into some of them, we noticed that many of them were simply fandom or reseller accounts, which had shared posts selling tickets for other concerts, too.
X user 'hung_leya' was one such seller, who shared posts selling tickets to Coldplay's concert on 18 and 19 January.
One user was selling tickets for Coldplay.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
A quick look at this profile showed that it routinely engaged in concert ticket resales, with posts sharing tickets for US popstar Olivia Rodrigo's concert in Hong Kong, K-Pop act Stray Kidz' event and Filipino girl group BINI's concert.
Older posts from another account selling tickets showed them participating in engagement farming.
The user participates in engagement farming.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
Since the resale began, social media users have been highlighting accounts which may have scammed them or the people they know.
BookMyShow's Take
We reached out to the platform, who shared the statement seen earlier in this report.
The platform said that 1.3 crore people had logged in to the platform for tickets, and they had "worked hard to ensure every fan had a fair chance to secure tickets, providing clear, step-by-step booking guides and maintaining transparent communication through all our official channels."
"We implemented a queueing system to manage the overwhelming demand and addressed issues caused by suspicious and malicious traffic within minutes, causing a brief delay, but ensuring minimal disruption for genuine fans," a spokesperson said.
When asked about tickets being resold at inflated prices, The Quint was told that BookMyShow had filed a complaint against third-party sellers reselling tickets at higher prices.
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