A South Premium West Bay ticket for the India vs. Pakistan 2023 World Cup contest in Ahmedabad is being sold at Rs 19,51,580 each (shipping and home delivery extra) on Viagogo, a “global online platform for sports tickets”. While the tickets for the marquee clash had waiting queues of over 6 hours and were sold out within minutes on official ticketing partner Bookmyshow.com, viagogo still has over 100 tickets available.
Since the tickets for India vs. Pakistan are now “sold out”, we checked the same seats for an England vs New Zealand game at the Narendra Modi Stadium on October 5. The price was only Rs 6,000 for South Premium West Bay and there were cheaper options of Rs 1,000, Rs 1,500, Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000.
The price range of tickets on viagogo at the same venue for India vs Pakistan starts from Rs 66,000 and goes well over Rs 19,00,000. CricketNext has been tracking the portal for a few days and the price range continues to fluctuate with the availability, the number of which hasn’t been constant.
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We checked prices of tickets for other India fixtures too and saw tickets for the India vs. England fixture in Lucknow at a starting price of Rs 2,34,632.
The starting price of India vs Afghanistan at Arun Jaitley Stadium is Rs 38,877, for one of the cheaper East Stand. It swells to a whopping Rs 2,34,622 for “Section: Category A”.
Tickets for the India vs Australia match in Chennai have a starting price of Rs 31,340 and go on till Rs 9,31,295.
While the surge is not this big for other World Cup fixtures but pricing for India matches has been catastrophic. The platform viagogo is also giving free home delivery facility to customers and has interactive maps on the website for better decision-making. They are charging a nominal delivery fee of close to Rs 400 for each ticket.
CricketNext reached out to Bookmyshow.com on the tickets being sold by viagogo and the portal said they have already flagged the issue.
“This has already been flagged off to the organisers of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023," said a spokesperson of the company.
The portal has been receiving a lot of flak on social media for the long wait time while booking tickets and then tickets, especially for all India matches, including warm-up fixtures, being sold out in minutes. Viagogo on the other hand is providing a much simpler interface where tickets could be purchased, but at a very heavy premium.
What is Viagogo?
The official website says it’s a “global online platform for live sport, music and entertainment tickets. viagogo aims to provide ticket buyers with the widest possible choice of tickets to events across the world”. There are provisions for users – individuals to event organisers - to even “sell spare tickets” and help it reach a global audience.
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It also clearly lists the steps to be taken for selling spare tickets and acts as the middleman between sellers and buyers. Viagogo, founded in 2006, claims to be “world’s largest secondary marketplace for tickets to live events”. And does mention that prices are set by sellers and may be below or above face value.
The portal’s corporate office is based out of the County of Kent, USA and they have dedicated customer support for customers from the Americas, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Europe. Apart from live sports events, it’s also home for reselling tickets for concerts and theatre shows. The concerts tab also has a listing for the very popular Taylor Swift.
The company has had partnerships with popular football clubs Manchester United, Chelsea and Bayern Munich in the past and continues to be a popular destination for reselling tickets. Issues of surge pricing, now being witnessed for World Cup tickets, have been raised in the past too and the lack of transparency and issue with refunds has attracted legal action too.
It now remains to be seen how Bookmyshow and other stakeholders of 2023 World Cup address the situation as tickets continue to be a major talking point. The ticket sales for the World Cup semi-finals in Kolkata and Mumbai respectively, and the final in Ahmedabad will now start on September 15.
