A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Bombay High Court seeking guidelines to curb black marketing and ticket scalping at major events, following the recent controversy surrounding sale of British band Coldplay’s concert in Navi Mumbai in January 2025.
The petition by Advocate Amit Vyas was mentioned by his lawyer before a bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar.
The plea highlights several irregularities and illegalities during the sale of tickets for major events, such as concerts, live shows and so on. Such irregularity and illegality was witnessed last month when tickets for the Coldplay concert were made available on the BookMyShow platform, he claimed in the petition.
Vyas’ advocate informed the court that the tickets for Coldplay concert were to be officially sold through BookMyShow, which were sold out within minutes. However, the same tickets were available in secondary websites for over Rs3.5 lakh.
The bench, however, said that the police was conducting inquiry in the issue and kept the matter for hearing in November after the Diwali vacation.
The PIL has urged the court to lay down stringent guidelines for prevention of black marketing, ticket touting and scalping of online tickets of such major events. Such illegal means were rampant during the IPL matches, the cricket world cup matches in 2023 and the concerts of singers Taylor Swift and Diljit Dosanjh, the PIL claimed. During such events, the organisers and ticketing partners exploit fans by listing the tickets on secondary ticket websites for exorbitant prices, it alleged.
It highlighted the recent Coldplay concert tickets, the plea added: “The sale of online tickets was apparently manipulated by BookMyShow platform in such a manner that even before mid-noon on the day the tickets were made available, people got logged out and were not allowed to access the website for purchase of tickets.” Within minutes, tickets of all three shows were shown as sold out on the BookMyShow portal even as tickets were later found available on a secondary website at exorbitant prices.
Last month, Vyas filed a complaint with the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai police, which is conducting an inquiry.
Such illegal practices have deprived people of their fundamental right to have an equal opportunity to access public entertainment. “The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 mandate e-commerce entities to ensure fair and non-deceptive practices. However, in the absence of effective regulations in the ticketing sector, entities such as BookMyShow are not complying with the rules,” the plea adds.
