Coldplay’s Chris Martin performs throughout the second day of the iHeartRadio Music Pageant at T-Cell Area in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. September 21, 2024.
| Picture Credit score: Steve Marcus
“We’ve been in queues for Taylor Swift tickets. This needs to be simpler,” a buddy mentioned, the night time earlier than. Large concert events in India are few and much between. Positive, music festivals are slowly however absolutely selecting up and we now have much more acts coming in, however a Coldplay live performance, the Music Of The Spheres World Tour 2025 is really a uncommon occasion – an ‘Journey of a Lifetime’, for those who should. Coldplay final visited India in 2016 for a live performance that older millennials fondly bear in mind with a lot pleasure.
It has been a day since what is going to now be referred to for years to return as ‘Coldplay ticketing Sunday’, and the Web is split. There are those that have managed to safe tickets, in disbelief, and the cautious acceptance of those that haven’t been as fortunate. Many others are in denial, on reels and tweets questioning if anybody has really secured tickets in any respect?
There are different modern, but costly options — debating if it will be a good suggestion to e book a room on the Marriott in Navi Mumbai close to the DY Patil stadium, for a unique piece of the live performance expertise. Scalpers too are dime a dozen, and there’s a lot anger on tickets being resold at astronomically excessive costs, and the way it will make higher monetary sense to plan and head to a live performance overseas.
Within the lead as much as Sunday when the ticketing was to start, many took to rigorously memorising the seating charts, analysing a number of reels detailing which might be the perfect seats to e book, and planning throughout cities for group bookings. There have been some pertinent questions raised throughout teams — how would we log in via our mobiles and laptops and nonetheless handle to remain in contact with one another if one in all us bought via? Will we all get on a Zoom name and let it run within the background? If we solely bought two tickets as an alternative of 4, who would we politely ask to go away?
Regardless of such intensive prep in place, it was not lengthy earlier than everybody arrived on the screaming realisation that the trail to the journey of a lifetime, can be an journey in itself.
Whereas ticket bookings had been anticipated to start at midday, chaos ensued when ticketing portal Bookmyshow crashed, seemingly unable to take the lakhs of individuals logging in to strive their luck. Even via the chaos, the memes flew quick, with quite a few references to Coldplay’s ‘Repair you’ being turned to “repair it”. When the ticketing started a couple of minutes later and folks bought into the digital queue, they discovered themselves waitlisted within the 1000’s, and even in lakhs. A 3rd present was added as effectively, giving followers one other probability to strive their luck with tickets.
Chennai-based Ashwin Radhakrishnan, who managed to e book a ticket for his buddy, attributed his ability, and luck to reserving tatkal tickets for trains repeatedly. “I’ve an excellent strike charge, and have type of gotten used to the system. We preserve attempting till we get it. A buddy challenged me to e book a ticket for her, and I managed to get her a standing ticket for the second day of the live performance,” he mentioned.
A sudden change within the variety of tickets allowed per particular person, from eight to 4 threw many live performance plans into jeopardy, proper earlier than the ticketing started. For Pooja Hemalatha from Chennai, the Coldplay live performance was part of a bigger plan — a friendship pact involving a bigger group.
“After I bought into the queue for tickets, there have been lakhs of individuals forward of me. It was a stroke of luck although, that an additional present was introduced and I managed to get into the queue for his or her third live performance. I used to be at 6,450, and managed to safe standing tickets for the ultimate day,” she says. The reserving although, concerned fairly a little bit of strategising on her half — logging into a number of units from totally different IDs, having mates log in at totally different locations and check out their luck as effectively, and determining fast cost choices forward of time.
A BookMyShow spokesperson mentioned that just about 13 million (1.3 crore) followers logged in to strive for tickets. “At this time is a landmark second in India’s reside leisure historical past as we noticed true fandom, overwhelming love and unbelievable pleasure on BookMyShow for Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres World Tour 2025 in India,” they mentioned, on Sunday.
BookMyShow and BookMyShow Dwell additional mentioned that they’ve labored arduous to make sure each fan had a good probability to safe tickets, offering clear, step-by-step reserving guides and sustaining clear communication via all official channels. “We applied a queueing system to handle the overwhelming demand and addressed points brought on by suspicious and malicious visitors inside minutes, inflicting a quick delay, however guaranteeing minimal disruption for real followers. Because of the unprecedented demand, a 3rd Mumbai present was added shortly thereafter, which additionally acquired a improbable response,” they added.
Within the aftermath of all of it, discussions surrounding what’s gearing as much as be India’s greatest musical occasion within the subsequent few months reveals no signal of dying down. The highway to the live performance has solely simply begun for a lot of, with trains and flights, and resort bookings subsequent on the agenda.
Printed – September 23, 2024 05:15 pm IST
