 "Diljit Dosanjh")
Diljit Dosanjh performing in concert (File Photo)
Fans of the British band Coldplay and Indian Punjabi Singer Diljit Dosanjh were left flustered and disappointed when they were unable to book tickets for their concerts.
Over 1.3 crore people logged into BookMyShow on Sunday, hoping to grab one of the 1.5 lakh tickets available for Coldplay’s Mumbai concert in January 2025. Tickets sold out in less than an hour, leaving many disappointed for the upcoming Coldplay shows at DY Patil Stadium. Social media platform X was flooded with complaints about the long queues, site crashes and site errors. In addition to this, fans pointed out the inflated prices of tickets being sold on secondary platforms, some even stated that a few other sites had been selling tickets for Coldplay before the official site had released them.
Amid this, Viagogo, a multinational ticket exchange and ticket resale brand, was also reselling concert tickets of Coldplay and Diljit Dosanjh at inflated prices. A ticket originally priced at Rs 12,500 was sold for Rs 3.36 lakh for Coldplay concert. In addition, standing tickets, initially priced at Rs 6,450, were being resold for up to Rs 50,000 for the same concert. The band had previously performed in India in 2016.
These caused Zomato’s ticket platform Zomato Live to send a legal notice to Viagogo for selling Diljit Dosanjh concert tickets, said a person in the know. Zomato is the official partner for selling the Punjabi singer’s upcoming concert tickets.
Business Standard could not confirm the exact timeline for the legal notice sent to Viagogo. Apart from this, Zomato Live has filed cybercrime complaints against several other secondary ticket-selling platforms for unauthorised sales of tickets, according to another person in the know.
The pre-sale tickets for the Diljit Dosanjh concert went live on September 10, which could be accessed by HDFC Pixel Card users, whereas the general ticket sale went live on September 12.
“We have filed a complaint with the police authorities,” said BookMyShow in an Instagram post. The entertainment and ticketing company further stated that they have no association with any ticket-selling/reselling platforms such as Viagogo and Gigsberg, or third-party individuals, for the purpose of reselling Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour 2025 in India.
BookMyShow has not mentioned where the police complaint was filed or the nature of the complaint. Also, no comments were given to Business Standard if BookMyShow has issued legal notices.
Business Standard could not reach out to Viagogo and Gigsberg for an official statement.
If BookMyShow or the concert organiser doesn’t send legal notices to entities selling tickets outside of the official channel, it could imply that the tickets being sold by these entities might not be considered illegal, said a person who did not want to be named. “The absence of a legal challenge could mean that these secondary sellers are operating with valid inventory,” the person said.
Opaque ticket selling system:
Ankur Bhasin, secretary of the Media and Entertainment Association of India, said that from the legislature’s perspective, technically scalping of tickets in India is not illegal. He highlighted that since the tickets are linked to the Session ID as compared to the Booking ID of a person, there are high chances for it to be resold on reselling platforms.
“There are two ways to curtail it. One is the legislation and the second is by tracking each and every ticket sale that is being done, which, of course, the platforms are not doing correctly because they don’t want it to be tracked,” Bhasin added.
If those tickets were transferred to another party without an official sale, it constitutes tax evasion, said a lawyer on the condition of anonymity. The platform reselling the tickets should have received them from an authorised source, which would involve proper documentation and taxation, the lawyer added.
In such cases, the state would benefit from a double entertainment tax. This is also one reason why ticket scalping hasn’t been fully outlawed — states may be reluctant to crack down on it due to the additional tax revenue generated from resales, said a person mentioned earlier. “If secondary sites can provide proper transaction records for the inventory they possess, it can clarify the source of the inventory and whether the transaction was legally conducted,” he said.
First Published: Sep 24 2024 | 7:24 PM IST
