BookMyShow COO Appears Before Mumbai Police Over Coldplay Ticket Row 

BookMyShow COO Anil Makhija made an appearance before the Mumbai police’s Economic Affairs Wing with regards to the Coldplay ticket row. This comes after the company’s CEO, Ashish Hemrajani, didn’t respond to summons made by the Mumbai Police. According to ANI, the summons was directed to Hemrajani, the CEO of Big Tree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. (the parent company of BookMyShow), and the company’s technical head, asking them to appear on September 30. However, instead of them, Makhija made the appearance before the police. 

Just to give some context, the issue started after Coldplay concert tickets were resold at an inflated price. Following this, many people highlighted that this is black marketing. The Coldplay concert is supposed to take place on January 18 and 19, 2025. The booking for the same started on the BookMyShow website on September 22.

Read: Coldplay's Concert Demand Reveals India's Growing Market for Going Out Experiences

Within one hour, the tickets were sold out and the website crashed. While 1.5 lakh tickets were available, around 1.3 crore people logged in to the ticketing website. 

FIR Filed Against BookMyShow 

The issue stemmed after an FIR was filed by lawyer Amit Vyas, the founder partner of Vertices Partners. In his complaint, Vyas accused the ticketing platform of black marketing. In his complaint, Vyas highlighted that this is a “blatant violation of consumer rights and various provisions of Indian Criminal Law." Following his complaint, the Economic Affairs Wing started looking into the matter. 

Vyas’s complaint was filed after his personal experience where he couldn't get the tickets from the platform and was logged out immediately. While he tried logging in after this, tickets were sold out immediately. 

Following this, he saw that tickets were being resold on another platform called Viagogo, which is a secondary platform. The company claims that it is a “multinational ticket exchange and ticket resale brand.” 

As tickets were being resold on secondary platforms, BookMyShow issued a statement and called it illegal. The company said in a statement, “BookMyShow has no association with any ticket selling/reselling platforms such as Viagogo and Ginsberg or third party individuals for the purpose of reselling of Coldplay's Music of the Spheres World Tour 2025 in India." 

Taking to X, the platform also highlighted that scalping is illegal in India and a punishable offense. The platform further highlighted, “We urge you not to fall victims of these scams.”