Ticket Booking (BookMyShow)
Sell seats for hot events without double-booking under massive flash-sale traffic.
Hard50 minSeat holdsContentionVirtual queue
A ticket booking platform like BookMyShow or Ticketmaster sells seats for movies, concerts, and matches. Normal days are easy; the real problem is a hot on-sale where hundreds of thousands of fans compete for a few thousand seats, and the system must never sell the same seat twice.
Clarify requirements
Functional
- Browse events/shows by city, venue, date; view a seat map with availability.
- Select seats and hold them for a few minutes while paying.
- Complete payment and receive a confirmed booking (e-ticket).
- Holds expire automatically if payment is not completed.
- Cancel/refund per policy.
- Out of scope: dynamic pricing, resale marketplace (extensions).
Non-functional
- 50M MAU; normal peak a few thousand bookings/min.
- Flash sales: 1M users arriving within minutes for a 50k-seat concert.
- No double booking (strong consistency on seat inventory).
- Browsing highly available and fast; seat map slightly stale is acceptable, final booking must be correct.
- Fairness during flash sales; bot resistance.
Try it first
Set a timer, sketch your own design on paper, then compare it with the reference walkthrough.
50:00
Defend it out loud
The AI interviewer will probe your design for Ticket Booking (BookMyShow) and score it.