‘We were underprepared for...’: BookMyShow CEO on Coldplay ticketing row

BookMyShow CEO Ashish Hemrajani, acknowledging certain shortcomings in the ticketing system, said that the platform was underprepared for the 10 million instances, which were largely bots, to hit their site when they started the sale of tickets for Coldplay. He said that they quickly learnt from their mistake and fixed the issues but they never black-marketed the tickets, as they were accused of doing. Hemrajani also said that this was probably the first time the privileged in India had to partake in a democratic ticketing system, and that had everybody up in arms. 

Speaking exclusively to India Today TV after the success of the Coldplay concerts that even elicited a remark by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Hemrajani said that they were under immense pressure in the first eight weeks since they kicked-off the ticket sale. 

“We were underprepared for 10 million instances that hit our site and they were largely bots, which came to our platform. And what had happened over there was that we had done a queuing system, which was linear. So if you came in early, you got first into the queue. It was overwhelming for the site when we had these 10 million bots, and the site went down for about nine and a half minutes. It took us that much time to reset and get the site up. Some people lost their turn in the queue, but to say that BookMyShow deliberately crashed the site, hoarded all the tickets, then put it on some reseller side is ludicrous,” said Hemrajani. 

The CEO of BookMyShow said that if they wanted to do so, they could have just increased the price on the site. “We own the platform as well. We're not just the promoters and producers of the concert. However, we got it right in the second show and the third show in Mumbai and subsequently the fourth and the fifth in Ahmedabad. We gave a randomised token ID to whoever came. We learned very quickly that there were too many people or too many bots that were trying to disrupt the ticket-buying process.”

“A lot of the media houses vilified us and crucified us without knowing the facts or even checking with us to say that we black-marketed the ticket, that I personally was a black marketer, that we have taken these tickets and sold them on other platforms. We had various law enforcement authorities come after us, questioning us, but it was subjudice. We clarified and gave all the data, satisfied the agencies who eventually realised that we were on the right side of the law and that we did whatever we could to mitigate all risks,” he said.

Hemrajani said, “We changed the number of tickets per transaction from eight to four to give more people the chance. We had the email ID, mobile number, device ID, transaction ID as well as the home address of every transactor because we were shipping these tickets and bands to people's homes. We had all of that. The problem really was that for the first time in India, the privileged were put in a democratic or a democratised ticketing system and that's what had everybody up in arms.”

He elaborated that the ticket-buying process was very transparent and nobody could approach a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy to get the tickets. “To give you a sense, only about 30 per cent of the people who came to the Mumbai shows were from Mumbai or Maharashtra, 70 per cent of the people came from outside. In Ahmedabad, the data was even more skewed – 80 per cent of the people flew in from other parts of the country. Every state and union territory had at least one transaction.”

He said that the problem then quickly changed to hotels, travel, transport, flights and buses to move people in an efficient manner. Hemrajani said he went to the floor on all the five shows and spoke to the people. “You realise how special it was for people who flew in from all parts of the country to be able to come and watch their favorite band. All’s well that ends well but in the beginning for those eight weeks we were under so much pressure to be able to react. People were telling us to refund tickets, cancel the shows. It was this whole cancel economy. And all we did was keep our dignity and just didn't respond and then deliver,” he said.