Coldplay’s Mumbai concert began as just a musical event but now it’s become a symbol of the growing frustration with ticket and resale practices. Within minutes of tickets going live on BookMyShow, they were gone, only to reappear on reselling platforms at much higher prices. This situation is naturally frustrating to fans, but it prompts us to think more about the economics of supply and demand related to concerts, and solutions that work instead of resulting in price controls and other destructive responses that have repeatedly failed every time they have been tried.

The concert excitement among fans has been tainted by a familiar issue: there are fewer tickets than there are fans, resulting in economic arbitrage (regularly denounced as ticket scalping). Minutes after ticket sales went live on BookMyShow, the tickets were already sold, only to reappear on reselling platforms like OLX at higher prices. Initially priced between Rs 2,500 and Rs 12,000, tickets were re-listed and sold for up to Rs 900,000. Unfortunately, this situation isn’t new.

Fans around the world have been dealing with the repercussions of slanted ticket practices for years. Whether it’s the reunion tour of Oasis in the UK or Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in the USA, major ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster have been accused of failing to protect real fans from bots and scalpers, igniting public outrage and inviting regulatory intervention. The Coldplay concert is a perfect example emphasizing the need to........

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