In today’s Finshots, we look at the chaos behind Coldplay’s concert ticket bookings and a potential way out.

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The Story

You’re out for brunch on a peaceful Sunday, when suddenly, you notice people seated around, all doing the same thing — heads down, fingers racing across their phones. You wonder what’s going on, until someone excitedly shouts, “I got them!”

That’s when it hits you. It’s Coldplay ticket booking day, and it’s 12 noon — the exact moment tickets for their concert went live on BookMyShow (BMS).

By 12:15 p.m., social media was ablaze with stories of waiting lists, app crashes and disappointed fans lamenting their missed chance at the concert of the decade.

For the uninitiated, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour has been a phenomenon, grossing over $1 billion, becoming the first tour to hit that milestone. Naturally, the excitement was palpable, especially for those who’ve grown up with their music. But with great excitement comes even greater chaos. And the BMS app didn’t stand a chance. It crashed almost immediately. And if you were one of the lucky few who managed to stay logged in, the tickets vanished faster than you could say “Viva La Vida”.

But let’s be honest. The odds were never in our favour.

Just think about it. The D Y Patil Stadium, where Coldplay will perform in January 2025, can accommodate around 50,000 people. Add another 10,000 for standing room, and that’s 1.8 lakh tickets across three shows. But with 1.3 crore people vying for those tickets, each of us had just a measly 1.3% chance of snagging one. It’s no wonder that Instagram was flooded with waitlist screenshots stretching into the lakhs.

And when demand skyrockets like this, a black market is almost inevitable.

Tickets originally priced between ₹3,500 and ₹35,000 were soon popping up on resale platforms like Viagogo, with some going for as much as ₹10 lakhs. This trick, called scalping, is the digital age’s version of those touts outside theatres selling ‘black’ tickets at sky-high prices.

But, why is this happening?

You see, India’s concert scene is booming, especially post-pandemic. For context, just last year, the organised live events sector grew by 20%, generating a whopping ₹8,800 crores in revenue, even surpassing pre-pandemic numbers. And it’s only getting bigger! An EY report says that the number of concerts with over 5,000 attendees each, is expected to hit 300 by 2025. That’s 50% more than in 2018! Besides, concert revenues are expected to jump to ₹1,000 crore, up 25% from where we are now.

And if you look at Coldplay, the three shows alone are set to bring in over ₹100 crores in ticket sales. Throw in the surge in hotel bookings, flights and dining expenses, and the economic impact skyrockets. Nearby hotels are already quoting ₹5 lakhs for a three-night stay, with most rooms booked solid. It’s classic supply and demand.

Clearly, the industry is maturing, and the appetite for live events has never been stronger. But with this surge in enthusiasm, the flaws in our ticketing systems have become glaringly obvious.

So, how do we put an end to this frenzy, you ask?

One possible solution is to adopt a model like airports use — requiring tickets to be linked to barcodes and verified with Aadhaar. But checking Aadhaar cards for 1.5 lakh people would be a logistical and privacy nightmare, right?

Another approach could be inspired by Zomato’s ‘book now, sell anytime’ feature, which allows users to resell their tickets through the platform. You list your ticket at a fixed price, pay a small fee, and when it sells, you get your money back. But this system isn’t foolproof either, as scalpers could still take advantage of this, buying tickets only to flip them for profit.

This leaves us with a potential fix that everyone’s buzzing about — NFTs or non-fungible tokens.

Imagine you draw a picture and give it to your friend. It’s one of a kind, and no one else can claim ownership. That’s essentially what an NFT is, except it’s digital. It represents ownership of a unique item. So, if Coldplay tickets were NFTs, each ticket would have a unique identity, like a fingerprint. This would make it much harder for scalpers to resell tickets at inflated prices, as event organisers would know exactly who owns each ticket and who’s trying to sell it.

And there’s already proof that NFTs can work for ticketing.

You could look at Thailand’s Wonderfruit festival. They switched to NFT ticketing and managed to reward concertgoers. Or even Coachella, one of the biggest music festivals in the US. It adopted NFT tickets to protect fans from the inflated resale market as well as pass on numerous benefits.

Plus, NFT tickets could offer extra perks — exclusive merchandise, backstage passes or even lifetime event access. Few of Coachella’s NFT ticket holders were granted lifetime festival access, benefiting both the festival and original buyers as prices soared.

So, exploring NFTs to solve India’s ticketing troubles is definitely worth a shot.

It could make scalping a thing of the past, give event organisers more control and ensure tickets go to genuine fans instead of opportunistic resellers.

After all, with India’s concert economy growing so rapidly, the ticketing system needs to evolve to keep pace. And NFTs might be a way to address this challenge, alongside other innovations in this developing market. As the music and ticketing market in India continues to expand too, we could see new solutions emerge. And who knows, maybe even virtual events on the horizon.

For now, many of us will have to settle for watching Chris Martin from our living rooms. But with better technology and fairer practices, perhaps next time we’ll have a better chance at being there?

Until then…

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