Coldplay Economics
To my surprise, I made it to the Coldplay concert. Allow me to tell you the story. And in the process, let me explain the economics behind the the band's impact on Indian live-experience market.
My first Coldplay song ever was ‘Clocks’. I was a young amateur chess player with dreams in my eyes but zero talent. Ridiculously ungifted. But that song kept me going.
Turns out that is the main talent you need — you gotta keep going. We have limited time on this planet, why waste it living someone else’s dreams? Keep going.
This isn’t the first time Coldplay has toured India — but when BookMyShow announced their 2025 India tour, it was as if the roof had fallen over our heads. Especially if you were a Mumbaikar.
Everyone wanted a ticket.
As you may have heard, the tickets went live and BookMyShow crashed seconds into the go-live time.
A Ticket to Ride
I would have imagined that most of the folks who got the tickets for the Navi Mumbai leg of the tour (3 concerts) were Mumbaikars.
“Indians don't generally travel within India to go to another location for experiential events. I think a lot of Indians who are discerning and want to visit concerts or sporting events... would travel to outside-India destinations but never within India. Like in the US, you would go from one city to another if there was a concert or a game. We've never seen that in India except for the Cricket World Cup for the finals, the India-Pakistan game, big games. Even IPL is generally city-centric. So that's changed with Coldplay...”
- Ashish Hemrajani, Founder/CEO, BookMyShow (Interview with Shereen Bhan, CNBC)
Ashish is on point — Indians travel domestic for weddings, maybe some important family events, and for tourism (vacationing). Not for experiential events such as games and concerts like in the West.
The numbers this time around tell a wild story. You would be amazed at how many people from Mumbai got the tickets for the Mumbai leg of the tour. Hemrajani shares granular data from the same interview:
"The reason why there's so much disappointment for consumers (regarding the shortage of tickets) is that in only Bombay, out of the three shows, only 20-30% of the transactors are from Maharashtra. Only 25% of the Maharashtra transactors are from Bombay. So let's set the context: there are 50,000 tickets per show in Bombay, and when you're looking at 20% of the transactors, you're looking at 10,000 tickets, okay, or 12,000 tickets, let me say, divided by four. That's 3,000 people in Bombay per show. That's 9,000 individuals from Bombay who have got a ticket for the shows in Bombay. Obviously, everybody is up in arms."
Still, Hemrajani, a self-described "Bombay boy," takes the long view. "I didn't wish it upon it that, hey, I don't want to give tickets. I'm a Bombay boy; I was born and raised here, but it's not up to me who gets the tickets."
Ahmedabad amplified the trend. As Hemrajani notes:
"The situation in Ahmedabad is even more different. In Ahmedabad, I think from every single state and union territory, there's a transactor for the Ahmedabad shows. Every single state and union territory. So I think it's only 15% of the people are from Gujarat. 85% of the transactors are from outside of Gujarat."
Official figures peg attendance at 111,581 on January 25, swelling to 111,989 on January 26, for a total of 223,570 across both Ahmedabad shows.
The above video shows the Motera station (metro) just after the concert ended. That is a mass of 100K+ people!
This geographic diversity, argues Hemrajani, is the secret sauce. In his words, "Any consumer or user that comes from outside of the city is four times more valuable to the exchequer."
I did not have any hopes of getting myself a ticket via BookMyShow. The odds were too low to even attempt competing. My group of four, Coldplay fans all of us, was mostly helpless.
How the hell did we make it anyway?
The Reselling Opportunity
Moments after BookMyShow had run out of tickets, they were found to be listed across reselling platforms at heavily marked-up prices. It turned out that ticket scalpers had used bots, millions of them, to attack BookMyShow and buy out the tickets.
They were then being resold on platforms such as Viagogo and Gigsberg for as much as Rs 960,000!! ($11,458), sparking widespread anger over the purchase process and the suspected use of bots to scoop up seats.
Angry fans even filed a police complaint. Ashish Hemjarani was summoned by Mumbai police’s Economic Offences Wing for questioning over the alleged black marketing of tickets for the concerts.
India doesn’t have any specific law regulating ticket reselling. But black marketing tickets openly at insane markups is certainly not legal (and not ethical). Of course, there was no reason for BookMyShow to spoil its own show by doing this and they got themselves out of the mess deservingly.
What India probably needs is a law that regulates reselling — because logically in a free market, it should be allowed for a ticket owner to resell his tickets because they themselves cannot use them.
While BookMyShow ticket booking process turned out to be a massacre, several groups such as this one sprung up on WhatsApp:
At about 8.30 pm on 25 January, approximately 13 hours before the last Coldplay act of their 2025 tour to India was about to begin, I registered myself on the sheet and was promptly granted entry to the group.
At about 9 pm on 25 January, I posted a message saying ‘Want to Buy, 26 Jan, 4 tix’.
Over the next 3 hours I had 7 responses from people who were selling the tickets at approximately the MRP price. All of them were in Ahmedabad(!).
What was missing was the surety a trustworthy and branded platform in the middle could provide to a buyer like me. Zomato tried this and rolled it out to much fanfare during their Dua Lipa concert but the feature doesn’t seem to exist in their app anymore, nor is it visible in their newly launched District app.
So while I was happy to have gotten the tickets just in time, I had no idea if the sellers would actually hand them over to me. Also, a big stadium such as the Narendra Modi Stadium has about 12 gates from where more than a lakh people were scheduled to enter.
As a fan what I was crunching was:
What are the odds that the tickets aren’t fake?
What are the odds that I will get the tickets from someone who is either in Mumbai (so I can collect before leaving) or Ahmedabad (so I can collect after reaching)?
What are the odds that the sellers turn up to hand over the ticket on time?
What are the odds that a group of 4 will get a ticket to enter the stadium from the same gate?
What are the odds that I win all the above legs? Very low.
This is a great example of a 4-leg parlay. Can a company be built to solve this for tickets of all sorts? (sports, movies, concerts, shows, etc.)
(If you are building in this space, please write to me - banjan@tal64.com!)
Luckily for our group, we actually slam-dunked the 4-leg parlay. The tickets were not fake. The guys who sold us the tickets were in Ahmedabad. All four sellers were waiting for us to collect them. All four of us got the tickets to enter via Gate No. 2.
Impact on the City Ecosystem?
Another problem fans across the country faced was the absurd rise in prices for hotels, flights, and buses. Trains of course were chock full — no surprise there.
Transportation costs to both Mumbai and Ahmedabad from cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, and Hyderabad touched absurd highs. It was not just about the demand being high — the supply was short too. For example, there are only 2-3 direct flights from Bangalore to Ahmedabad.
My group got somewhat lucky (again) — we simply rented out a car from Mumbai to Ahmedabad and back. It cost us approx. Rs. 3500 per head including petrol and tolls. We could leave the city as soon as the concert was over, eliminating the need for stay. Not bad but we are privileged, of course.
You can read this article by Priyanka Nahata for NDTV Profit detailing out the impact on hotel and flight prices.
BookMyShow actually went over and above what was expected of them to build an ecosystem around the tour. Hemrajani explained in his CNBC interview which was shot before the concerts:
"So we're working with the Railway Ministry, we're working with the government to say, can we add more trains from Bombay (to Ahmedabad) so people can come to Bombay because it's is well connected, and then they'll go to Ahmedabad. We're working with the Central Railway in Bombay to add two trains which will run from Goregaon to Andheri, will go to Bandra, will go to Wadala, and then Jui Nagar and Nerul. So about 4,000 people can go in that."
Ticketing Revenue
Although there are a lot of unofficial figures floating around the internet, most of them don’t seem to make sense to me. I have a lot more conservative view on the revenue numbers generated purely from ticket sales. Here goes:
Navi Mumbai (3 shows):
Ahmedabad (2 shows):
TOTAL TICKET REVENUE: ₹221.2 crores ($27.1 million). I feel these are more realistic numbers than some of the vanilla going around on the internet.
Ripple Effect
For Ahmedabad alone, assume 50% of the 201,000 (85% of 223,570) out-of-state fans who attended the shows stayed one night at an average room rate of Rs. 5,000 (very, very conservative figure). That's ₹50.25 crore ($6.1M) in incremental lodging revenues alone. Sprinkle in ₹2,000 per head on meals, intracity transport, and merchandise, and you have another ₹40.2 crore ($4.9M).
The "exchequer effect" compounds from there. Restaurants, street vendors, ridesharing apps, airlines - the list of second-order beneficiaries is long. Layer in the GST on induced demand, and you have a material economic engine humming.
The Memo to Businesses
In the erstwhile mentioned CNBC interview, Ashish explained his thought process about how he views the Indian market. Take note, boys and girls.
We live in four Indias.
We live in the London of India, which is about 5 million (50 lakh) people who have the highest purchasing power parity in the world. Maybe the top 10 percentile, right? They could fly, study in any university, pay whatever money, do whatever they want.
And then there's about 50 to 60 million (5-6 crore) Indians, which I call the United Kingdom of India — English speaking, private healthcare, private education.
Between this set of consumers, which is 60 million and 5 million, they control probably 70% of the economy and about 80% of the consumption.
Then there's 400 million Indians, which I call the Brazil of India, which is the emerging middle class. Till about 10-12 years ago, their average monthly household income would be about $100. Today, it's about $400. But if you compare PPP, you just multiply it by four. So it's about $1,600 to about $1,800 - that's the consumption that they can do with 400 bucks. But they put better food, better education, and better healthcare for their kids. And it's amazing to see that in 10 to 12 years, this has grown four times.
And then you've got about 300 to 350 million Indians, which I call the Africa of India - underserved, undernourished, over-exploited by guys like us.
And all of this coexists in a 1 km radius. You could be sitting in this office - this could be the London of India - and there's a flyover there with somebody down, which is the Africa of India.
BookMyShow seems to be on a category-creation journey where they build experiences to serve all the four Indias.
In catering to a new generation of Indian consumers willing to traverse the country for Instagram-worthy moments, businesses are learning that memories (and the selfies that capture them) are the ultimate souvenir.
Coldplay's legacy in India, then, may extend beyond the musical. In stress-testing the country's still-nascent live experience economy, the band provided a sneak peek of what's possible when entertainment, travel, and consumption intersect. For fans, it was an experience of a lifetime. For businesses, it may be a roadmap to new frontiers of growth.
If you want us to write your story or cover an interesting idea, or if you are building a company in the live experience economy, write to me at banjan@tal64.com.
Wow, this was such a fantastic read! Very subtle and to the point. You gave such a wonderful overview of the economics of the biggest concert held. And most importantly, it was simple to read and easy to understand. Brilliant stuff!👏👏👏