World Cup 2023: Mumbai Police Arrests 2 For Black Marketing Tickets

In India, cricketers are equivalent to gods for cricket fans, and the game of cricket is their pilgrim. Taking advantage of this cricket fever, two residents of Mumbai ran a racket and sold tickets for the World Cup semi-final match between India and New Zealand in black. But the good news is that the racket run by Roshan Gurubakshani and Akash Kothari was busted by Mumbai Police.

On November 15 the World Cup Final was played between India and New Zealand at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai. Blackmarketers had a field day making a tonne of money as true cricket fans are denied the opportunity to witness the men in blue play live versus New Zealand at the legendary Wankhede. Meanwhile, the BCCI is standing by and taking the fervent supporters of cricket for granted.

Both the accused worked for an event management company named Team Innovation. The firm organizes music fests, cultural shows, and sports events across the nation.

Following Kothari and Gurubakshani's detention by the police, the police officer discovered a well-known online ticket aggregator that served as the only official ticket source for all BCCI cricket matches in India.

Siddhesh Kudtarkar co founder of Team Innovation and another leading offline ticketing agency Wink Entertainment are under the radar of Mumbai Police for huge black marketing of cricket match tickets.

The hoarded tickets were sold at inflated prices as high as INR 1,00,000. 

A senior police official said that both got access to the login credentials of a major ticket aggregator and were able to block about 70% of the tickets for the India-New Zealand semi-final, which went on to be sold for up to INR 100,000 on the black market. The official authorities have examined the electronic gadgets owned by the duo. After examining their phones and other digital devices the authorities got several evidences of black marketing of tickets for prestigious events in Hyderabad, Goa, Pune, Mumbai, and other cities. 

As per JJ Marg Police Officials, Akash Kothari operated from his residence in Malad. He sold tickets for INR 50,000 to INR 100,000 on social media apps. For this black marketing sale, Rahul Gurubakshani arranged the tickets.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Pravin Mundhe stated that the cricket match tickets were sold in the black market at a fourteen times higher rate than the actual value of INR 2,500 printed on the ticket.

The authorities believe that there is a large-scale scheme involving the hoarding of tickets in quantity for all of these events by online ticket aggregators, who then sell the highly-priced tickets around athletic events to agents on the black market to make more money while dodging taxes and other levies.