Coldplay’s Mumbai concerts: 'Soldplay' in 30 minutes, but buzz & black market last the day

PUNE: "Always in my head," sang Coldplay in 2014. Ten years later, that song title was a good descriptor of the state of mind of a crore-plus Indian fans, as they desperately hunted for tickets to Coldplay's Mumbai concerts, scheduled for January next year. ‘Soldplay' was the fans' social media funny and accurate take on ticket sales.

Per the booking site, 1.3 crore people logged in to buy tickets. Just 1.5 lakh tickets were up for grabs. The British rock band's second Mumbai visit will see them play on three days in DY Patil stadium; which has a capacity of 50,000. Three concerts were sold out in 30 minutes.

But both for the few who'll sing along with Chris Martin & co as they belt out Amsterdam and other hits, and for the many, many who won't, Sunday was a day like few others.

Many ticket seekers kept refreshing their screens hoping to get that precious thing. Some received notifications that tickets for the concerts on Jan 18 and 19 were sold out in 30 minutes. BookMyShow then announced an additional show for Jan 21 at 1.30 pm on Sunday. That, too, sold out in a flash.

The online ticketing site crashed briefly, such was the rush. Coldplay devotees were ready much before Sunday noon, when online ticketing started. Fingers flexed, eyes glued to the site on computer screens and/or the app on their phones, most fans were in despair as they saw the queue numbers move in hundreds every 15 minutes or so.

One major fan grouse was about ‘reseller' ticket prices. BookMyShow had priced tickets between Rs 2,000 and Rs 35,000. Per social media complaints, so called reseller sites were offering tickets and stratospheric multiples of those prices. Apparently, in one site, a Rs 12,500 ticket was being offered for over Rs 3 lakhs. Then came BookMyShow's statement that these tickets were ‘fake'. How many fans bought these super pricey tickets in black market is not known. Nor whether each of these is a fake.

As with Taylor Swift concerts, which produce multi-country ticket mania, that Indian fans of Coldplay were so hyper is a testament to the sheer joy of being there physically. You don't just listen, you experience.

Stories of those who'll miss out on that experience made for sad reading. Pune-based musician Imaad Saraf said, "My whole family was trying to buy the tickets at the dot of noon but the notification read ‘there are not enough tickets in the inventory' on the portal."

Joshua Fernandes, an IT professional from Bengaluru, was lucky. He got his tickets. And he had a critique. He said the band has a mandate for ticket prices, to allow people a fair chance of buying them. But in India these plans don't work, he said. "Standing-on-the-ground tickets, originally priced at Rs 6,500 are being sold at over Rs 50,000 in black."

Some fans suggested alternative ways of selling tickets. One posted on X that concert tickets should be allocated like shares in IPOs. The queue system gives "awful user experience", he said, suggesting ticket seekers should be asked to öpen UPI mandates, and allocation should be decided by the "best possible algorithm".

And of course, there was plenty of dark humour. A joke that first surfaced in X during the last football World Cup was repurposed: chap who got a Coldplay ticket realised the date clashes with his wedding day, he is offering anyone interested to take his place - not at the concert, certainly not, at the wedding.

That should tell you everything.