Comedian Kunal Kamra, who is facing a police case and threats for a joke that offended Maharashtra deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde, called upon BookMyShow to give him information on those who have attended his shows.
BookMyShow, a ticketing platform for entertainment genre, removed Kamra from the list of artistes on its website last weekend after a letter from a youth leader of Shinde's Shiv Sena who vandalised the venue where Kamra performed the standup.
In a statement on X, Kamra said: "By not allowing artists to list their shows through their own websites, you've effectively prevented me from accessing the audience I've performed for from 2017 to 2025. You take a 10% cut of the revenue for listing shows, which is your business model. However, this raises an important point: No matter how big or small a comedian is, we are all compelled to spend between 6,000 to 10,000 rupees a day on advertising to reach our own audience.
“While you might argue that data protection is a concern, the question of who protects what data, and from whom, is a much broader conversation. What I'm requesting is simple: please ensure that you hand over the contact information of the audiences you've collected from my solo shows so that I can continue living my life with dignity and work towards a fair livelihood…. The least I deserve, should you choose to delist me, is access to them.”
BookMyShow posted on X: "Bookmyshow is a platform to facilitate the sale of tickets and operates the business with neutrality and in compliance with the applicable laws of India. Facts on our role have been misrepresented in the public domain. Our role is to provide a platform for ticket sales of live shows and it is the decision of the organiser or the venue to list or delist their shows."