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Coldplay’s Chris Martin performs during the second day of the iHeartRadio Music Festival at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. September 21, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Steve Marcus
“We’ve been in queues for Taylor Swift tickets. This should be easier,” a friend said, the night before. Big concerts in India are few and far between. Sure, music festivals are slowly but surely picking up and we have a lot more acts coming in, but a Coldplay concert, the Music Of The Spheres World Tour 2025 is truly a rare event – an ‘Adventure of a Lifetime’, if you must. Coldplay last visited India in 2016 for a concert that older millennials fondly remember with much joy.
It has been a day since what will now be referred to for years to come as ‘Coldplay ticketing Sunday’, and the Internet is divided. There are those who have managed to secure tickets, in disbelief, and the wary acceptance of those who have not been as lucky. Many others are in denial, on reels and tweets wondering if anyone has actually secured tickets at all?
There are other innovative, yet expensive solutions — debating if it would be a good idea to book a room at the Marriott in Navi Mumbai near the DY Patil stadium, for a different piece of the concert experience. Scalpers too are dime a dozen, and there is much anger on tickets being resold at astronomically high prices, and how it would make better financial sense to plan and head to a concert abroad.
In the lead up to Sunday when the ticketing was to begin, many took to carefully memorising the seating charts, analysing several reels detailing which would be the best seats to book, and making plans across cities for group bookings. There were some pertinent questions raised across groups — how would we log in through our mobiles and laptops and still manage to stay in touch with each other if one of us got through? Do we all get on a Zoom call and let it run in the background? If we only got two tickets instead of four, who would we politely ask to leave?
Despite such extensive prep in place, it was not long before everyone arrived at the screaming realisation that the path to the adventure of a lifetime, would be an adventure in itself.
While ticket bookings were expected to begin at noon, chaos ensued when ticketing portal Bookmyshow crashed, seemingly unable to take the lakhs of people logging in to try their luck. Even through the chaos, the memes flew fast, with numerous references to Coldplay’s ‘Fix you’ being turned to “fix it”. When the ticketing began a few minutes later and people got into the virtual queue, they found themselves waitlisted in the thousands, or even in lakhs. A third show was added as well, giving fans another chance to try their luck with tickets.
Chennai-based Ashwin Radhakrishnan, who managed to book a ticket for his friend, attributed his skill, and luck to booking tatkal tickets for trains regularly. “I have a great strike rate, and have sort of gotten used to the system. We keep trying until we get it. A friend challenged me to book a ticket for her, and I managed to get her a standing ticket for the second day of the concert,” he said.
A sudden change in the number of tickets allowed per person, from eight to four threw many concert plans into jeopardy, right before the ticketing began. For Pooja Hemalatha from Chennai, the Coldplay concert was a part of a larger plan — a friendship pact involving a larger group.
“When I got into the queue for tickets, there were lakhs of people ahead of me. It was a stroke of luck though, that an extra show was announced and I managed to get into the queue for their third concert. I was at 6,450, and managed to secure standing tickets for the final day,” she says. The booking though, involved quite a bit of strategising on her part — logging into multiple devices from different IDs, having friends log in at different places and try their luck as well, and figuring out quick payment options ahead of time.
A BookMyShow spokesperson said that nearly 13 million (1.3 crore) fans logged in to try for tickets. “Today is a landmark moment in India’s live entertainment history as we saw true fandom, overwhelming love and incredible excitement on BookMyShow for Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres World Tour 2025 in India,” they said, on Sunday.
BookMyShow and BookMyShow Live further said that they have worked hard to ensure every fan had a fair chance to secure tickets, providing clear, step-by-step booking guides and maintaining transparent communication through all official channels. “We implemented a queueing system to manage the overwhelming demand and addressed issues caused by suspicious and malicious traffic within minutes, causing a brief delay, but ensuring minimal disruption for genuine fans. Due to the unprecedented demand, a third Mumbai show was added shortly thereafter, which also received a fantastic response,” they added.
In the aftermath of it all, discussions surrounding what is gearing up to be India’s biggest musical event in the next few months shows no sign of dying down. The road to the concert has only just begun for many, with trains and flights, and hotel bookings next on the agenda.
Published – September 23, 2024 05:15 pm IST
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