This is the second summons issued to Ashish Hemrajani, chief executive of ticketing website BookMyShow, regarding the black marketing of tickets for Coldplay concert dubbed “Music of the Spheres World Tour,” slated for January 2025. The first summons was issued on 27 September, and on this second summons, the CEO and technical head of the company didn’t appear to court. Advocate Amit Vyas filed a case against the online ticketing website on a complaint that it was allowing third-party sellers to sell tickets at outrageous prices, prompting a police investigation.
According to Vyas, the ticket prices have been artificially inflated by unauthorized sellers from the official range of Rs 2,500 to Rs 12,500. In light of these allegations, BookMyShow has clearly indicated its disconnection from any occasion of scalping and has rendered all-out condemnation of it as an attitude that attracts towards not dealing with resellers at all. The company, in this regard, has also filed its complaint with the police against those making accusations against it.
BookMyShow also issued an advisory to fans to not consider third-party sellers for tickets. The company was worried about the probability of fake tickets and loss of money due to genuine fans who are eagerly waiting for the concert. Besides legal actions, there is an advisory from BookMyShow mentioning that fans should not go for third-party tickets since they may fall prey to some fake tickets that might cause financial loss.
Coldplay will return to India after eight years. The last time it performed here was in 2016, at the Global Citizen Festival. The news sent fan enthusiasm sky-rocketing. But the process of buying tickets was marred by technical issues such as server crashes and long wait times. On the sale date, about 1.3 crore users tried accessing the BookMyShow platform; demand was very high.
Due to tremendous demand, BookMyShow had implemented a waiting line system in order to deal with the large volume of visitors. It maintains that the queueing was causing only minimal inconvenience to fans. The company added a third show to the tour due to popular demand and received a positive response from the audience for these concerts.
As the inquiry continues to unravel, the company and its chief executive will be under intense scrutiny over their roles in the ticketing process for what would otherwise have been an eagerly anticipated series of concerts.