The Coldplay concert has become the talk of the town. The rock band, scheduled to perform on January 18 and 19, 2025, at Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium, is experiencing a surge in ticket demand.
Amid the increasing demand to watch the Coldplay concert, tickets were sold out in less than an hour on the BookMyShow website
The Coldplay concert has become the talk of the town. The rock band, scheduled to perform on January 18 and 19, 2025, at Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium, is experiencing a surge in ticket demand.
The band will play tracks from 'Music of the Spheres', new singles from 'Moon Music', and classic hits. To enhance the atmosphere, the concert will feature lasers, fireworks, and LED wristbands.
Amid the increasing demand to watch the concert, the tickets were sold out in less than an hour on the BookMyShow website on September 22. While around 1.3 crore people logged in to the ticketing platform, the number of tickets available was around 1.5 lakh tickets. The concert's ticket price ranged from Rs 2,500 to Rs 35,000.
As the demand for the concert increased, the band mentioned that they would have another concert in Mumbai on January 21.
While the ticket sale was supposed to go live from 12 pm, however, at the peak of increased demand, the app crashed. As a result, the tickets were sold only from 12:15 pm.
Several people waited patiently to buy the tickets, but they were sold quickly, leaving a sense of frustration for the audience. Twenty-eight-year-old Kritika Rane from New Delhi says that overall the experience of buying tickets was very frustrating. “I was on BookMyShow since 11:30 a.m. Around 12:00, the site crashed. Tickets hadn’t gone live by then, but they became available around 12:10-12:15. By the time I got in the queue, 180,000 people were ahead of me,” says Rane.
Meanwhile, apologising about the technical glitch in its platform, in a statement, BookMyShow mentioned, "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.” The platform further added that the increased demand made them add a third Mumbai show.
The Diljit Doshan concert, supposed to be held in October this year, also saw a similar audience demand. Taking to Instagram, the singer announced that there will be two concerts in Delhi with other shows in Jaipur and Mumbai. This, overall, indicates a surge in the demand for the going out segment. A report titled ‘The Music Creator Economy—The Rise of Music Publishing in India 2023’ by consulting firm EY indicates that “Music generates Rs 12,000 crore of revenues per year, which is approximately 6 per cent of the Indian Media & Entertainment industry.”
Additionally, data from FICCI-EY reveals that the organised live events sector grew by 20 per cent in 2023, generating Rs 8,800 crore in revenue and surpassing pre-pandemic figures. Speaking about the growing trend of the going out segment, Somdutta Singh, founder and CEO of Assiduus, a platform that offers cross-border e-commerce solutions, told Outlook Business earlier, “The rising disposable income and changing lifestyle preferences among urban consumers further bolster this expectation.”
Zomato's focus on the going-out segment appears well-timed, coinciding with a surge in demand. On August 27, 2024, Zomato acquired the movie and ticketing business of fintech platform Paytm, known as Paytm Insider, for Rs 2,048 crore.
Following the acquisition, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal told shareholders in a letter, “This is not really an absolutely new business for us, as we have already been doing ticketing as a business for more than a year now and have been eyeing building more use-cases for that business.” He further added that they believe, over the next decade and beyond, going-out experiences will continue to grow strongly in lockstep with overall growth in lifestyle and consumption.
The company is also focusing on launching its new app named ‘District’ that will focus on capturing the going out segment. The food delivery gain’s going out segment also saw an increase in revenue from Rs 171 crore in FY23 to Rs 258 crore in FY24.
Amid the surge in demand for these tickets and as the space grows, a significant trend that is being witnessed is the reselling of tickets online at skyrocketed prices. People are taking to several sites, such as Instagram and reselling platforms like Viagogo, to sell the tickets at prices as high as Rs 3 lakhs. The situation became so intense that BookMyShow even issued a statement about the same.
The movie and ticketing platform highlighted, “It has come to our attention that unauthorised platforms are listing tickets for Coldplay's Music of the Spheres World Tour 2025 in India, both before and after the official sale. These tickets are invalid.”
The company further highlighted that ticket scalping is illegal in India. Ticket scalping is the act of buying a ticket and then selling it at a higher price. This in turn brings the discussion back to Zomato’s ‘Book Now, Sell Anytime’ feature, where customers can buy a ticket and then sell it later in case there is a change in plan for them. The company website says, “If their plans change for any reason, they can list their ticket on the Zomato app at their chosen price (capped at the organiser’s discretion).” Following the launch of this feature, several experts pointed out that this new feature is black marketing, while others feel that it is legal if it is complying with the rules and regulations.