Simone Khambatta lashes out on Coldplay concert ticket fiasco: That's really unfair

Tickets for the Indian shows of British rock band Coldplay, that will take place on January 18-19, 2025, went up on September 22. Soon after, the internet was flooded with people sharing their queue numbers, expressing their frustration over not being able to book theirs, while reselling of the tickets also started online. Influencer Simone Khambatta shared a reel on her Instagram questioning how tickets were being sold for the concert at another website while they were open on the official ticketing partner app.

Talking to us, she says, “I logged in at 11:45 AM, and was sitting there waiting with multiple devices and kept refreshing until it would say ‘book now’. As soon as I entered, I was at some 1.4 lakh in the queue, and till 12:20 there were no tickets coming up. But as soon as they opened on BookMyShow, they did on viagogo as well. That’s what has been really confusing as how did they do this? Whoever these resellers are, how did they get so much access before us? At viagogo, they were showing 10 seats together with ₹45000 per ticket, in multiple different categories. How have they booked 10 seats together as BMS limit was 4 per card?”

While she don’t have proof of it, Simone is fairly certain that somewhere the ticketing platforms are also enabling this process of black marketing of tickets. “While I can’t verify it, someone commented on my reel that they are a former BMS employee, and when they were working there, certain employees would keep a certain number of tickets and block them for reselling,” she shares.

A third show of Coldplay was added within an hour of the tickets going live owing to the high demand, but Simone faced discrepancy there as well. “When BMS posted it on Instagram, it literally said 7 seconds ago when I immediately joined the waiting room. Then I informed my friends, and one of my friends entered a minute later and another one entered at 2 PM. When the queue numbers came out, I was the first to enter and I was at five lakhs something, while my friend who entered a minute after me was at 4000. The one who entered at 2 PM was at 16000. So, what is the system? Why was I in the queue at all? Was there never any queue? This is really unfair,” she insists.

The influencer adds that the platforms should have protocols in place to prevent this immoral practice: “The least they can do is make the ticket non-transferable so as to not allow black marketing of the tickets. They should have some form of ID that makes it non-transferable. So many influencers have messaged me about getting DMs from resellers asking four-five times the original price. This isn’t the kind of practice we should promote. If you are taking the responsibility of being the ticketing partner for a global sensation like Coldplay, then you have to care about the fans.”