Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], September 28 : Amid the controversy regarding the re-selling of the concert tickets for the upcoming "Music of the Spheres" tour of English rock band Coldplay in Mumbai, Shiv Sena (UBT faction) spokesperson Anand Dubey wrote a letter to Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Friday to probe into the "nexus engaged in the black-marketing of tickets."
In his letter, Dubey stated that the tickets for the concerts were "reportedly" sold out within minutes of the sale going live. However, he added that despite the official ticketing partner BookMyShow's declaring the show being sold out, there were other "unofficial channels" through which the tickets were being made available at "exorbitant prices."
"The tickets were reportedly sold out within minutes of being made available online, which left many genuine fans, particularly the youth, disappointed. This situation was further exacerbated when it was discovered that tickets are still available through unofficial channels at exorbitant prices despite BookMyShow officially declaring that the show is sold out," he stated.
"It appears that there may be a nexus engaged in the black-marketing of tickets, exploiting the enthusiasm of young fans who are willing to spend large amounts of their parents' hard-earned money to attend this concert. This not only violates the principles of fairness but may also involve illegal activities such as money laundering, cheating, and fraud," he added.
The copy of the letter was also sent to Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Mumbai Police Commissioner and Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner in demand for a probe into the matter.
Meanwhile, in a self-made video, Dubey said that during the sale of the tickets, the BookMyShow site crashed in two to four seconds and the company said that all the tickets were sold out following this.
Additionally, he said that despite the tickets being sold out, in reality the tickets were being sold at a price 5 to 10 more expensive than the original through other websites, which he alleged creates suspicion of BookMyShow doing "black marketing" and demanded a probe into the matter.
"The youth thought of buying these tickets; the responsibility of selling the tickets and the responsibility of making arrangements for them is with BookMyShow. When the youth wanted to buy tickets in lakhs, the website of BookMyShow crashed in 2 to 4 seconds and the company said that they had sold all the tickets. The reality is that there are other websites where tickets are still being sold through black marketing at 5 to 10 times more expensive prices. So we are getting suspicious about whether BookMyShow has done any black marketing... For this, we have to be careful and vigilant and we will demand that there be a thorough and intensive investigation of the entire method of selling BookMyShow tickets," he said.
Earlier on Friday, Mumbai Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) summoned Ashish Hemrajani, CEO of Big Tree Entertainment, the parent company of BookMyShow, along with the company's technical head, in connection with an investigation into the alleged black market sales of Coldplay concert tickets.
The two had been asked to appear before the investigating officer on Saturday to provide their statements as part of the ongoing inquiry.
The summons comes after Advocate Amit Vyas filed a complaint, accusing the ticketing platform of facilitating the black marketing of tickets for the highly anticipated Coldplay concert, scheduled to be held on January 18, 19 and 21, 2025, at DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai.
According to Vyas, tickets that were originally priced at Rs 2,500 have been resold by third-party websites and influencers for as much as Rs 3 lakh. He has alleged that BookMyShow deceived the public and Coldplay fans and is seeking an FIR to be registered against the company on fraud charges.
On September 18, Coldplay officially announced their "Music of the Sphere" World Tour, where they initially were going to perform two shows in DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai but added an extra show on January 21st following high demand.