(This article is co-authored with Mridula Bhat)
Ticket Scalping is the practice of using bots to bulk buy tickets from licensed sources and then sell them for a profit. These can be tickets of any type but often involve major sports and music events. Sometimes, you hear this referred to as ticket touting or ticket reselling as well.[i]
In short, the practice of buying large number of tickets for exclusive events and reselling them online is considered as ticket scalping. This was done recently in two events, the live performance shows of Diljit Dosanjh and Coldplay.
Ticket Scalping really hits consumers hard. Imagine you’ve been waiting months to see your favourite band or go to a big cricket match, and then boom—tickets sell out in minutes, only for them to reappear at five times the price on some sketchy reseller site. It creates this ridiculous market where only those willing to shell out a lot more than the ticket’s face value get to go, making events less accessible to the everyday fan. It’s almost like a legal way of keeping people out of the fun, and public frustration is growing because of this.
Background
Recently, Coldplay’s upcoming concerts in Mumbai led to concerns regarding ticket scalping, where tickets were bought in bulk using bots and resold at inflated prices. The band’s three shows in Navi Mumbai, part of their Music of the Spheres world tour, sold out within minutes on BookMyShow (BMS), the official ticketing platform. Tickets, which were initially priced between ₹2,500 and ₹12,000, were later found being resold on third-party platforms for more than ₹9,00,000.[ii]
It was alleged that tickets were being resold at inflated prices even before they were released on the official platform. Concerns were raised about the use of bots or automation tools to purchase large quantities of tickets for resale. Fans questioned whether the ticketing platforms had implemented adequate measures to prevent this practice.
This raises a question of whether ticket scalping is legal or not?
Illegality of Ticket Scalping
The depends on whether we are talking about a simple individual who wants to resell tickets, a group which indulged in ticket scalping, or an organization that engaged in ticket scalping which was responsible for selling the tickets in the first place.
Is it illegal for you to resell the tickets you manage to buy?
It’s possible you didn’t even manage to get below 2 lakhs in the queue, let alone buy a ticket, but let’s say you bought one, and seeing the market, you decide to sell it for some profit. Is that illegal? Let’s take a look at what happened in Mandeep Singh vs UT Of Chandigarh:[iii]
The petitioner, after completing his education in the UK, began working as a freelance software developer. He had purchased five tickets for the India-Pakistan World Cup semi-final match at Mohali. An Inspector browsing eBay.com found five tickets for the match being resold for £1,800, much higher than the ICC’s set price of Rs. 30,000/- per ticket. The seller, Mandeep Singh, claimed he was selling due to a family wedding.
The Inspector instructed Sub-Inspector Ashok Kumar to place an online bid of Rs. 95,000/- and provide his contact details. Mandeep called back, insisting the tickets would be sold for Rs. 1,25,000/-. Kumar arranged to meet Mandeep at a coffee shop in Chandigarh, where the police laid a trap. After negotiating, the price of one ticket was settled at Rs. 24,000/-. Once the payment was made, Kumar signaled the police, and Mandeep was apprehended. The marked currency notes were recovered, and an FIR was registered.
The petitioner, after being charged under Section 66-A of the IT Act and Section 420 IPC for reselling World Cup semi-final tickets, sought quashing of the FIR. The petitioner argued that Section 66-A had been struck down by the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India and that no case under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, (now, replaced by Section 318 in Bharitya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023) was made out since there was no intent to cheat.
Note: Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) made it illegal to send offensive or menacing information using a computer or other electronic device. The law was intended to protect women from cyber crimes, but was criticized for limiting civil and political liberties. In 2015, the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal ruled that Section 66A was unconstitutional and violated freedom of speech.
The Court noted that Section 66-A had indeed been struck down, and that no offence under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, was made out, as there was no inducement or deceit. The petitioner had openly disclosed the higher price of the tickets, and there was no legal prohibition against reselling them. The Court held that continuing the proceedings would amount to an abuse of the process of law. The Court also held that: “In India, there is no legal restriction against reselling match tickets. There is a restriction for transfer of some train tickets but not all of them are non-transferable.”[iv]
Is ticket scalping illegal if done by the organizer responsible for the sale of tickets?
Organizers can scalp tickets using software to artificially create scarcity and resell them at higher prices. By holding back a portion of tickets from official sales, they can use tools like bots, auto-refreshers, and form fillers to quickly buy up remaining tickets. These tickets can then be resold through secondary platforms at inflated prices. The software automates tasks such as account creation, form filling, and bulk purchases, allowing organizers to manipulate supply and increase demand, driving up resale prices and profiting from the scarcity they create.
A practice like this could arguably be against the law in the following ways:
Unfair Trade Practice
The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 is designed to protect consumers from unfair trade practices, which includes being overcharged for goods and services. Ticket Scalping, where buyers are forced to pay prices far above the printed value due to unfair practices, might constitute such a practice. Under the Act, consumers could file complaints about being exploited by unscrupulous ticket resellers. Ticket Scalping by the promoter of the event could be considered as an unfair trade practice as well.
A legal notice was also filed when a law student failed to book a ticket for the Diljit Dosanjh Dil-Luminati Tour concert, alleging ‘malpractice‘. It was alleged that the Dil-Luminati Tour organizers opened ticket sales earlier than the announced time, resulting in tickets being sold almost immediately. The notice claimed that this sudden sale and ticket unavailability suggested manipulation and scalping practices, with the organizers artificially inflating demand and prices. This conduct was alleged as an unfair trade practice under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, violating consumer rights by hoarding and reselling tickets at inflated prices.[v]
Under Section 2(47) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019[vi], the term unfair trade practice is defined. An “unfair trade practice” refers to a method or practice adopted to promote the sale, use, or supply of goods or services, which involves deceitful, false, or misleading representations or actions. These practices can include, inter alia:
- misleading the public about the price of goods or services, implying they are sold at a regular rate when they are not;
- permitting the hoarding or destruction of goods, or refusal to sell the goods or to make them available for sale or to provide any service, if such hoarding or destruction or refusal raises or tends to raise or is intended to raise, the cost of those or other similar goods or services. (Section 2(47)(v))
In the context of ticket scalping, if a ticketing platform or organizer engages in hoarding by deliberately restricting the availability of tickets to create artificial scarcity, this could be classified as an unfair trade practice. For example, if a platform sells tickets but simultaneously uses bots to buy up a significant portion for resale at inflated prices, it could be seen as hoarding.
However, there being an absence of any orders or judgements on this aspect, it’s not possible say if such an activity would always be considered as an unfair trade practice. The surrounding facts and circumstances would have to be considered.
Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020
Rule 4 (11) of the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020[vii] made under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, prohibits e-commerce platforms from manipulating the prices of goods or services to gain unreasonable profits. It restricts prices from being artificially inflated to exploit consumers, taking into account factors like market conditions, essential nature of goods or services, or any extraordinary circumstance.
In the context of ticket scalping, if an e-commerce platform manipulates ticket prices to resell at inflated rates taking market conditions into account, it may be in violation of this rule.
Violation of Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Indian Penal Code)
In a complaint filed by lawyer, Amit Vyas, it was alleged that online ticketing platforms engaged in unethical practices during the sale of tickets for Coldplay’s concert on September 22, 2024. The complainant accused BookMyShow of deliberately obstructing genuine fans by logging them out or preventing access to the platform, enabling bots and black-market operators to buy tickets. The tickets, which were sold out on BookMyShow, immediately appeared on resale platforms like Viagogo at exorbitant prices, raising suspicions of alleged collusion between BookMyShow and third-party resellers. The complaint alleged that BookMyShow and Live Nation used bots and creating artificial digital queues, thereby depriving genuine fans of fair access to tickets and violating consumer trust.[viii]
The lawyer also intended to file n First Information Report (FIR) against BookMyShow, and those involved, citing violations of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023[ix], as follows:
- Section 111(2): Organised Crime – If scalping is organized and carried out singly or jointly to manipulate the ticket prices, it could be considered an economic offense under organized crime, particularly if it involves coercion, fraud, or other illicit tactics to obtain a material or financial benefit. However, for this to apply, the act of reselling tickets would have to be illegal in the first place in the concerned state.
- Section 318(4): Cheating – If buyers are deceived into overpaying or missing out on tickets due to dishonest practices, causing financial harm or damage to their interests, it could be considered cheating under this law.
- Section 316(2): Criminal Breach of Trust – Criminal breach of trust could apply to ticket scalping if a ticketing platform or organizer, entrusted with tickets or control over their sale, dishonestly misuses or diverts them for resale at inflated prices, violating a contract express or implied with the consumers or the main event organizer.
- Section 61(2): Criminal Conspiracy – If multiple individuals or entities, such as a ticketing platform and resellers, conspire to manipulate ticket availability through illegal means (e.g., using bots) to resell at inflated prices, and take steps to carry out this plan, it could be considered a criminal conspiracy.
This could be an interesting case if developed, as the allegations are that a ticketing platform itself engaged in criminal cheating / breach of trust, as opposed to an individual consumer.
Other State Acts
In addition to the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act and Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, other state laws may also be applicable in cases of ticket scalping. For instance, the Rajasthan Entertainments and Advertisements Act, 1957, could impose penalties for violations related to ticket sales. Section 10 of the Rajasthan Entertainments and Advertisements Act, 1957 prohibits the resale of tickets for profit. It states that no ticket holder may resell an admission ticket for any entertainment event, irrespective of other laws. Violators face a fine of up to two hundred rupees upon conviction by a Magistrate. The term “entertainment” includes exhibitions, shows, performances, amusements, games, sports, and cable services requiring payment for admission.
Is ticket scalping legal in foreign countries?
United States
A reference can be drawn to foreign precedents such as the one of Ticketmaster LLC vs Prestige Entertainment in the United States Court wherein Ticketmaster, a major ticket distribution company, sued Prestige Entertainment and several other companies for using bots to buy up large quantities of tickets for resale at inflated prices. The lawsuit alleged violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and various state anti-scalping laws. Prestige Entertainment settled with Ticketmaster and agreed to pay $3.35 million to resolve the claims. This case was significant because it showed the use of bots in scalping and how it violates not only state laws but also broader computer-related statutes. Following cases like this, the U.S. passed the BOTS Act (Better Online Ticket Sales Act) in 2016, making it illegal to use automated systems to purchase tickets.
Further, in the case of Vernon v. StubHub, the Plaintiff, brought a case against StubHub, a popular secondary ticket marketplace, for allowing the resale of tickets at higher-than-face value, violating the anti-scalping laws in the state of New York. The court ruled in favour of StubHub, emphasizing that the platform was not responsible for the illegal actions of individual scalpers. This case is a key example of how platforms often escape liability by arguing they are just intermediaries, not active participants in the scalping. This case highlighted the need for stronger regulation of resale platforms rather than individual resellers.
Australia
The case of Eventim UK Ltd v. Vivendi Universal SA (2009) dealt with issues of contractual agreements and scalping. Vivendi Universal was found to have breached a contractual agreement with Eventim UK by allowing third-party resale of tickets above face value. The primary issue here was less about the legality of scalping itself but rather about the enforcement of contracts against secondary market activity. The court ruled in favor of Eventim UK, emphasizing the importance of preventing unauthorized reselling of tickets.
Australia has laws at both the federal and state levels, such as in New South Wales, where the Fair Trading Act limits ticket resale to no more than 10% above the original price. Australia also passed the Ticket Scalping Act in 2018, which penalizes bot usage and sets price caps on resales.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the online resale of tickets is regulated by consumer protection legislation. Specifically the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA 2015). Under Section 90 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, when tickets are resold online through secondary ticketing platforms, resellers and platforms must provide certain information to buyers. This includes the face value of the ticket, the seat number or location, any restrictions on the ticket’s use, such as age limits or accessibility needs, and any connection the seller has with either the event organizer or the platform facilitating the resale.
The case of Watson v. Viagogo was brought by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) against Viagogo, a resale platform, for failing to meet consumer protection standards. The CMA claimed that Viagogo had not provided accurate information about resellers, pricing, or seat locations, which allowed ticket scalping to flourish.
The UK courts sided with the CMA, forcing Viagogo to overhaul its practices and become more transparent about its listings, fees, and sellers. This was a significant win for consumer protection and anti-scalping efforts in the UK. The UK also passed the Digital Economy Act (2017), which includes measures to tackle online ticket resale, focusing on greater transparency and regulating how tickets can be resold.
A criminal case was brought against two prominent ticket scalpers, Andrew Lee and Peter Hunter, in the case of R v. Andrew Lee and Peter Hunter who used bots to acquire large amounts of tickets for major events like Ed Sheeran concerts and resold them at inflated prices through Viagogo and other platforms. They were convicted under the Fraud Act 2006 and sentenced to jail time, marking one of the UK’s largest scalping busts. This case sent a strong message that authorities were taking illegal scalping seriously. It highlighted the evolving legal landscape in the UK, where not only were sellers held accountable, but even the platforms faced scrutiny for facilitating these sales.
Canada
The country brought about a legislative change by introducing the Ontario’s Ticket Sales Act in 2017. This was more of a legislative change than a case law, but it is worth mentioning because of its significance. The province of Ontario passed a law that outlawed the use of bots to scalp tickets and mandated that resale prices cannot exceed 50% of the face value of a ticket. This legislation followed widespread consumer outrage over inflated resale prices for concerts and sports events, particularly involving the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors.
Challenges of Enforcement and Legal Gaps
Despite existing laws, enforcement of anti-scalping measures in India remains problematic. Some of the challenges include:
- Lack of Specific Legislation – India does not have a dedicated law at the national level that addresses ticket scalping comprehensively. Instead, authorities often rely on a variety of laws that, while effective to an extent, are not specifically tailored to the nuances of modern-day scalping practices, particularly online scalping. This creates loopholes that resellers exploit.
- Difficulty in Tracing Transactions – A significant portion of ticket scalping now occurs online, where transactions are harder to trace. While physical reselling can sometimes be stopped at the venue gates, online scalping through secondary websites, social media platforms, and messaging apps presents a major challenge for authorities. Scalpers can remain anonymous, use multiple accounts, and quickly take advantage of high-demand events without detection.
- Proving Intent – Proving that a person is scalping tickets for profit rather than reselling them innocently can be difficult in court. This evidentiary challenge hampers law enforcement efforts and results in relatively few prosecutions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the legality of ticket scalping in India presents a complex landscape. The answer to the question if reselling tickets of a Coldplay concert is illegal is also a bit tricky. The Indian government has started attempting crack down on online platforms that allow scalping, but there is a lack of comprehensive nationwide legislation specific to this issue. While there are provisions that could render ticket scalping illegal, specific circumstances would be necessary to attract penalties, but in any case precedents are limited.
Individuals would generally have the right to resell tickets as held in Mandeep, but organizations may face scrutiny under unfair trade practices, especially if they engage in activities that artificially inflate ticket prices or manipulate access to events.
To mitigate ticket scalping, a potential solution would be to implement a system that records buyers’ names, ages, and contact numbers during the ticket purchase process. Requiring buyers to present government-approved ID cards for verification would further ensure that tickets are sold to genuine fans. Why this measure was not adopted is unclear. Probably it was due to operational challenges in scrutinizing the IDs of all concertgoers in a short time span before the concert starts.
Public reaction to ticket scalping is generally negative, especially when it makes events inaccessible to average citizens. This has led to growing calls for stricter laws and enforcement mechanisms.
End Notes:
[i] https://seon.io/resources/dictionary/ticket-scalping/.
[ii] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c99v12e3yj4o.
[iii] Crl. Misc. No.M-21747 of 2011; https://indiankanoon.org/doc/107291106/.
[iv] Ibid, at Para 11.
[v] https://www.business-standard.com/entertainment/diljit-dosanjh-gets-notice-over-manipulation-in-dil-luminati-tour-tickets-124091800734_1.html.
[vi] https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/15256/1/a2019-35.pdf.
[vii] https://consumeraffairs.nic.in/sites/default/files/E%20commerce%20rules.pdf.
[viii] https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/police-complaint-mumbai-lawyer-coldplay-tickets-probe-bookmyshow-9593012/
[ix] https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/250883_english_01042024.pdf.
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