A complaint filed with the Economic Offenses Wing, Mumbai, has brought to light severe allegations of ticket black marketing against BookMyShow and Live Nation Entertainment. Amit Vyas, founder of the law firm Vertices Partners, has accused the companies of orchestrating an elaborate scheme to artificially inflate ticket prices for Coldplay’s upcoming concert in India, scheduled for January 2025.
According to the complaint, Vyas argues that the companies violated multiple sections of the newly implemented Bhartiya Nyaya Samhita, 2023, through cheating, criminal breach of trust, and organised crime.
The central claim revolves around BookMyShow’s exclusive ticketing rights for the Coldplay concert. The complaint alleges that BookMyShow intentionally manipulated the ticketing process, logging out legitimate customers, only for the tickets to mysteriously reappear at inflated prices on the secondary ticketing platform Viagogo.
Vyas’s complaint suggests a carefully coordinated effort between BookMyShow, Live Nation, and ticket resellers to exploit the huge demand for Coldplay’s concert.
Vyas recounts his personal experience trying to purchase tickets when the platform logged him out just seconds before sales began. Although BookMyShow cited server issues, Vyas alleges that this was part of a deliberate strategy to prevent users from purchasing tickets directly. Instead, bulk tickets were allegedly passed to resellers like Viagogo.
According to Vyas, approximately 9 lakh of these ‘users’ in the queue were bots, suggesting that BookMyShow deployed artificial traffic to create a false sense of demand and justify ticket scarcity.
Vyas’s complaint lists a range of violations BookMyShow allegedly committed. Among the most serious are accusations of criminal breach of trust. BookMyShow, entrusted as the sole ticket distributor for the concert, is accused of dishonestly misappropriating the tickets in violation of its legal obligation.
By enabling their resale on Viagogo, Vyas argues that BookMyShow has defrauded fans and the general public.
Furthermore, BookMyShow violated Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 by deliberately making the site inaccessible to customers. In addition to black marketeering claims, Vyas accuses BookMyShow of depriving the Indian government of taxes.
As Medianama reports, this aspect of the complaint could draw attention from tex authorities, further complicating the situation for BookMyShow and Live Nation.
The complaint also alleges that BookMyShow’s server ‘downtime’ was part of a deliberate ploy to deploy bots and hoard tickets for resale.
Responding to these allegations, BookMyShow denies any association with Viagogo or Gigsberg.
“BookMyShow has no association with any ticket selling/reselling platforms such as Viagogo and Gigsberg or third party individuals for the purpose of reselling of Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour 2025 in India,” the company said.
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