(CNN)- Fans eagerly awaiting Coldplay’s return to India were shocked to find tickets being sold online for up to $11,000, prompting police to take a statement from the CEO of the show’s seller over fraud allegations.
The British rock band will perform three concerts in Mumbai in January as part of its popular Music of the Spheres Tour, their first concert in the country since 2016.
Ticket sales were scheduled to begin on September 22 at 12 noon local time through the official supplier, BookMyShow (BMS). But for many users, websites and apps crashed amid the lawsuit.
When fans were able to enter the virtual queue to buy tickets priced from 2,500 to 35,000 rupees ($30 to 417), he said they were behind hundreds of thousands of users.
Within minutes, tickets worth up to 960,000 rupees ($11,458) were sold out and reappeared on other platforms, sparking anger over the purchase process and the alleged use of bots to get seats. To put this in perspective, the World Bank says India’s current GDP per capita is $2,500 per year.
Amit Vyas, lawyer and founding partner of Mumbai law firm Vertices Partners, was among the fans waiting for tickets on the seller’s website when it suddenly crashed.
They filed a complaint with the police, alleging that the online ticketing platform made tickets available to resellers and third-party websites for resale in the black market.
“I don’t know anyone in Mumbai or outside Mumbai. I received many calls from friends in Delhi. Nobody got tickets,” Vyas told CNN, expressing frustration that more efforts are not being done to protect fans from bots and other reseller practices.
BookMyShow founder and CEO Ashish Hemjarani was summoned by the Economic Offenses Unit of Mumbai Police on Monday for questioning over the alleged black market in concert tickets, a Mumbai Police official said.
In a statement on reporting to the police. According to CNN affiliate News18, the complaint was related to the alleged sale of fake concert tickets on some platforms.
“Reselling products in India is strictly condemned and punished by law. “We have lodged a complaint with the police authorities and we will provide our full cooperation to them in investigating this matter,” the seller said.
Coldplay fans told CNN that their attempts to buy tickets for the January show at Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium left them frustrated and disappointed.
Arkatappa Basu, a 26-year-old journalist who lives in the southern city of Bengaluru, said she was waiting behind 130,000 people to buy tickets when she learned a third show had been added.
When she went to join the waiting list for the third show, she saw that there were 700,000 people waiting in front of her. “That’s when I decided to give up,” he said.
Ishan Jhamb, a 22-year-old engineering student from Delhi, said re-sold tickets were so expensive that he and his friends decided to fly nearly four hours to see the band in Abu Dhabi because it would be cheaper.
The process of purchasing tickets for large concerts often causes resentment among buyers around the world.
Last month, British rock band Oasis announced a reunion tour, sparking a frenzy of criticism over Ticketmaster’s so-called dynamic pricing, where companies adjust prices based on factors such as demand.
A Ticketmaster spokesperson told CNN at the time that the company does not set ticket prices. According to the Ticketmaster website, promoters and artists set prices, which may be fixed or negotiated based on demand.
In November 2022, Ticketmaster faced public scrutiny over its handling of the hugely popular Taylor Swift Erasure Tour, for which the company says there was “historically unprecedented demand.”
