Live events business set to get buzzier
Shah's confidence stems from the 120% jump his business has seen after BookMyShow acquired a majority stake in TribeVibe in 2022 and he started curating all large-scale domestic music and comic tours for the platform.
TribeVibe's rise reflects the boom in the organised segment of India's live events industry which saw a 15% jump in 2024 and was valued at ₹20,861 crore, according to a white paper released at the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) in Mumbai last week. Commissioned by the information and broadcasting ministry, the white paper was prepared by EventFAQS Media.
It provides a snapshot of emerging trends marking 2024-25 as the turning point with the successful return to India of global icons like Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa and Bryan Adams.
Rahul Ganjoo, CEO of live events firm District by Zomato, says, this rapidly expanding sector is driven by changing consumer preferences, evident in an increasingly inclusive audience that extends beyond traditional urban and age-defined groups. 'There's a growing consumer desire for live artist performances and increasing interest in immersive social experiences,' he adds.
The white paper underlines the rise of event tourism, with nearly half a million attendees travelling specifically for live music shows, pointing to the emergence of music tourism economy. The Coldplay concert in Ahmedabad for instance was attended by more than 2.2 lakh people over two days with 86% attendees travelling from outside Ahmedabad for the show, it says.
Also, premium ticketing for elite experiences saw 100% year-on-year growth, indicating love for exclusivity as evident in the price of Coldplay tickets that ranged from ₹3,500 for general access to more than ₹25,000 for the VIP experience tiers. Hospitality packages for the concert reportedly crossed ₹1 lakh per guest, the white paper says.
'The demand for live events is no longer limited to major metropolitan areas, with artists showing more inclination to tour Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, as demonstrated by the strong public response to tours by Diljit Dosanjh and Bryan Adams,' Ganjoo says. 'Indore, Kochi, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, and Surat are now regularly hosting large concerts and IPs,' the white paper notes.
TribeVibe's Shah says audiences in smaller towns are beginning to spend on music and stand-up comedy shows. The music and comedy fest he curated especially for GenZ that toured five smaller cities, saw Kota in Rajasthan selling 9,000 tickets. His next big gig is Zakir Khan's stand-up comedy tour across 30-40 cities
The white paper points to the rise of regional artists as another promising trend. Diljit Dosanjh (Punjabi), Anirudh Ravichander (Tamil), Sid Sriram (Tamil/Telugu/English), and Yuvan Shankar Raja (Tamil) tour across North, West, and South India, performing to packed crowds in cities where their native language is not dominant, it says.
The increasing popularity of live experiences has forced businesses to sit up and take note. BookMyShow invested in TribeVibe, Zomato bought Paytm Insider and rebranded it District and Warner Music India picked a minority stake in ticketing and live events platform SkillBox. In December, the India Today Group launched an entertainment-experiential vertical Stage Aaj Tak to curate and organize music concerts, theatre and stand-up comedy shows. International event companies are also keen to enter India, says Shah.
The white paper says India's live events landscape is transforming into an important pillar of the country's cultural and creative economy. That explains why it found a mention in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at WAVES: 'India's creative economy can increase its contribution to GDP in the coming years…There are many possibilities before us for the industry related to Live Concerts,' he said in his opening remarks.
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