When Coldplay decided to play two shows in Mumbai early next year, they vastly underestimated how many Indians desperately wanted to see them live. BookMyShow, their \u2018exclusive\u2019 ticketing platform, was immediately overwhelmed by the response. The website crashed before sales even began. Eventually, BookMyShow had to throw up massive online \u2018queues\u2019 to accommodate the tens of lakhs of people seeking a ticket. Most walked away empty-handed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that wasn\u2019t even the worst bit. Many people who got tickets didn\u2019t even want to see the show<\/em>! They wanted to sell them onwards and make a quick buck. Almost immediately, tickets appeared for re-sale on websites like Viagogo, for up to \u20b99 lakh a pop<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess we\u2019re all supposed to get angry at this whole episode, or at least that\u2019s what Twitter tells me. And while Twitter could get mad at a newborn puppy cuddling with a child, in this case, I see why. It feels<\/em> unfair. It\u2019s just not how things should be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I\u2019m a little confused about, though, is who <\/em>it\u2019s unfair to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You could argue something like: \u201cColdplay built a legacy over three extremely difficult decades. They wrote music, performed night after night, and ground patiently through the politics of the music industry, until people recognised their name on every corner of this planet. And now, when lakhs of Indian fans try to see them, these wretched ticket scalpers make money at their expense?!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Horrible! That money belongs to Coldplay \u2014 not some rando who got lucky with ticketing queues!<\/p>\n\n\n\n But also \u2026 so what<\/em>? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Coldplay and its management were probably front-and-centre in planning their Indian shows. They came with a vague sense of what India could afford and how much it cared for international music \u2014 and they planned accordingly. Happily, they underestimated themselves. In fact, this mania showed Coldplay that people weren\u2019t done with them. It was a signal; there was enough demand in India for them to sell out a whole third<\/em> show. So they promptly planned one<\/a>, and sold it out. The long queues, the social media sobbing and the ticket scalping allowed <\/em>Coldplay to push their revenues up by 50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So maybe the ticket scalpers used Coldplay\u2019s name to make money. But how did they leave Coldplay any worse off? If anything, they had a better idea of how crazy Indians were for Coldplay than Coldplay themselves<\/em>, and this difference in perceptions was how they made money. And, I don\u2019t know, that doesn\u2019t really seem unfair to me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have a lot less sympathy for this one, because BookMyShow\u2019s platform IS ABSOLUTELY FU-… (I should keep that one for my personal blog).<\/p>\n\n\n\n But anyway, here\u2019s the case: \u201cBookMyShow was the exclusive platform to sell Coldplay tickets. It probably took them many rounds of negotiation and some big concessions to bag the contract. They put in all that effort for a reason: for it, they\u2019d get service fees, data and lakhs of eyeballs. But at the very last moment, Viagogo swooped in from nowhere and rubbished their exclusive rights! They scraped all those benefits, and a lot of free publicity besides, with none of the hard work!<\/em>\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n My God. So sad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But, of course\u2026 this isn\u2019t unfair<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like Coldplay, BookMyShow knew exactly what it stood to gain if both shows were sold out. It got there in minutes. From what I can tell, on the day of booking, it got 1.3 crore people<\/a> on its platform. That\u2019s two-and-a-half New Zealands put together. Trust me when I say this, because I work for a tech company: that\u2019s mad<\/em> traffic. Server crashes aside, this might well be one of the best days the company ever saw. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In all, BookMyShow had some expectations from the Coldplay tour, and those expectations were, well, met<\/em>. Does ticket scalping take anything away from it? Maybe it still wants exclusivity on principle, and maybe all the reselling goes against the terms on which they sold tickets. But that\u2019s for their lawyers to sort out. Those aren\u2019t principled questions, they\u2019re arcane matters of contract law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Principally, Viagogo (or those reselling tickets) didn\u2019t take anything away from BookMyShow. They benefitted in addition to<\/em> it. Of course BookMyShow doesn\u2019t like that. But their complaint<\/a> isn\u2019t that people resold tickets \u2014 it\u2019s that they resold tickets on another platform<\/em>. If people did the same thing using BookMyShow\u2019s own services, they\u2019d be perfectly happy. Now for the most convincing complaint \u2014 the one from fans:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI did everything they asked me too! I tracked the concert from the moment it was announced; I logged in as soon as I could, and refreshed the page fifteen times before it would work \u2014 and what do I find? These a-holes had already bought all the tickets, in bulk! Using BOTS! They didn\u2019t even want them \u2014 they\u2019re just selling them for lakhs! There\u2019s no way I can afford that! I hate this!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hey, I get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were one of the first 0.5% that logged in, and still couldn\u2019t land a ticket \u2014 it does <\/em>suck to be you. If BookMyShow didn\u2019t maintain basic digital hygiene and forced you to race against bots, that\u2019s worse. And if, by any chance, the conspiracy theories<\/a> are true \u2014 that BookMyShow actually throttled sales so they could hand tickets over to resellers, that\u2019s criminal<\/em>. If there\u2019s a way in which you want people to buy tickets, stick to it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the grand scheme of things, though, those were just a small number of tickets. There\u2019s a larger problem here: ultimately, too many people who wanted too few tickets. Someone had<\/em> to lose out. And whoever lost out would feel cheated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In an ideal world, those limited tickets would go to India\u2019s biggest Coldplay fans. Some bands are trying that. Oasis, for instance, wants people to answer a quiz<\/a> before they can buy a ticket. That\u2019s hardly practical, though? More people tried getting a Coldplay ticket than those that wrote the IIT-JEE (Mains!) this year. If even the IIT-JEE doesn\u2019t catch all of India\u2019s best engineers-to-be, can BookMyShow do any better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it can\u2019t, you have<\/em> to pick a completely arbitrary metric to decide who to give tickets to:<\/p>\n\n\n\nTheory #1: It\u2019s unfair to Coldplay<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
At some point in the last many months, Coldplay sat down with its management, did some math and decided: hey, maybe some of those billion-plus people would like to see an ancient British band whose best songs came in the early 2000s! If we sell X tickets for Y bucks each, we\u2019ll probably earn enough to spend a whole week in India!<\/em> And then, they went and sold exactly as many tickets for exactly those rates. They knew the most they could earn from these shows well in advance. They hit that number in minutes. Even if there were no reselling, they wouldn\u2019t have made a single extra paisa.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTheory #2: It\u2019s unfair to BookMyShow<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How do I know that? Because arch-rival Zomato Live is actually trying out its own in-house reselling platform<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\nTheory #3: It\u2019s unfair to the fans!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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