Live events catch on among youngsters

Forget movies, it is live shows and events that are gaining momentum. Not only are more international artists keen to perform in India, the number of shows, artists and ticket prices are also on an upswing.

While comedy and electronic dance music are most sought after, Bollywood-themed live events are also highly popular with several events being backed by corporates like Colgate, Red Bull, Bacardi and Pepsi among others.

A few months ago, the Jerry Seinfeld show which was cancelled due to infrastructure bottlenecks, had tickets priced at a whopping ₹7,500 and all of them sold out. Others like comedy collective All India Bakchod too had tickets priced at ₹4,000 for a sold out show.

Interestingly, even college fest and corporate events which were meant for a certain audience are now being ticketed due to the surge in demand.

“We see comedy as a category growing big-time with several international artists showing keen interest. The ticket prices also average between ₹3,000-6,000,” Jaideep Singh, Senior Vice-President and Head, INS Viacom18 said, adding the average ticket pricing were also witnessing an increase, owing to the willingness of people to pay for live events.

Viacom18 has a live events vertical, Integrated Networks Solution, and plans to monetise global IPs from its portfolio. Singh added, “When we launched in 2013, we had about 12 properties or events. Now we have about 210 events. We are scaling this up to about 300 events”.

Live Viacom18 engages with consumers through large format live properties such as Vh1 Supersonic MTV VMAI, Nickelodeon KCA, Emerge, MTV Xtreme, and Comedy Central Chuckle Festival, among others.

Youtube also recently hosted its live FanFest event in Mumbai. “Over the past year, we’ve seen popular Indian creators emerge on YouTube and excite people around the world. We’re bringing YouTube FanFest back to Mumbai for a second show to celebrate this new generation of YouTube stars with some of the portal’s most passionate aficionados in Asia,” said Gautam Anand, Director of Content and Operations, YouTube Asia-Pacific said in a statement.

Ajay Nair, co-founder, OML (Only Much Louder), also notes that live gigs are becoming the flavour of the youth. The company, which was instrumental in the organising the Jerry Seinfeld event, said the even top colleges spend about ₹60-70 lakh on their annual cultural festivals and some of them are even ticketing these events.

“Besides comedy and EDM, Indian acts are also doing well. As against four or five live events across India, there are about 50-60 programmes held nowadays,” Nair added. OML, which host large sized events, owns properties like the NH-7 Weekender.

Both Singh and Nair pointed out that improvements in the necessary infrastructure and lesser paperwork to hold shows will go a long way in developing the the market for live events.