With Coldplay and Ed Sheeran among the many superstars who’ve performed to packed-out crowds in India just lately, there may be growing discuss that the world’s most populous nation may quickly turn out to be a mainstay of the worldwide touring schedule.
However, a scarcity of world-class venues to host big-name occasions has left followers wanting, with complaints starting from filthy situations, poor safety and technical issues among the many points inflicting complications for organisers.
Booming demand from younger prosperous Indians trying to splurge on new leisure experiences are drawing worldwide acts in addition to vastly in style homegrown stars.
Big-name stars have previously ignored the nation, given the traditionally low spending energy of its customers.
But whereas per capita earnings stays low at $2,500, funding bankers Goldman Sachs estimate that the variety of Indians with annual earnings of greater than $10,000 has jumped from 24 million in 2015 to 60 million in 2023.
That has helped appeal to the form of expertise unthought of only a decade in the past, with Dua Lipa taking part in to packed crowds final 12 months and U.S. chart-toppers Maroon 5 taking part in their first gig within the nation.
Robin Hood crooner Bryan Adams performed plenty of sold-out venues throughout nation in 2024, whereas different artists like Green Day and Shawn Mendes will carry out later this 12 months.
“A decade ago, India was not on their radar,” stated Deepak Choudhary, occasion administration entrepreneur and founding father of EVA Live.
“It’s a hungry audience sitting across the country,” he stated, including that he believes India’s music occasion business is on observe to meet up with markets equivalent to Britain, Japan or Germany inside three to 5 years. “You give them good content and they are happy to explore.”
The variety of reside occasions in India rose nearly a fifth final 12 months, in accordance with the nation’s largest ticketing platform BookMyShow, which referred to as music tourism a “defining trend”.
Coldplay final month carried out what the band referred to as its “biggest-ever show”, at an enormous cricket stadium named after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad.
Their tour prompted a wild scramble for tickets, which have been priced from round $30-$420.
“As soon as they announced the concert dates, I booked my flight ticket, I booked my stay because I wanted to get there first,” stated Monica Sawant, 36, who travelled from Bengaluru to see them in Mumbai.
But demand was so excessive she was pressured to buy from ticket touts. “I caved in… I thought I would not make it,” she defined, paying $125 for a $55 ticket.
After the Coldplay present, Modi praised what he dubbed the “concert economy”, saying “India has a massive scope for live concerts”.
However, not all cities have the infrastructure wanted to host large reside occasions, with BookMyShow’s CEO Ashish Hemrajani likening the expertise economic system increase in an interview to “starting an airline but not having an airport”.
Fans complain that makeshift venues can have poor sanitation, non-existent crowd-control measures and horrible site visitors to achieve the venue with little parking house.
“It was awful,” stated Ruchi Shukla, 27, describing her expertise at a present final 12 months in Gurgaon, a satellite tv for pc metropolis of New Delhi.
“You had to fight to get into the venue, fight to get out, and even during the concert you had to fight to hear the singer.”
Other performers starting from Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh to South African comic Trevor Noah have publicly complained about Indian venues.
Noah in 2023 carried out to sellout crowds in New Delhi and Mumbai, however scrapped exhibits in tech-capital Bengaluru because the viewers couldn’t hear him.
In January, U.S. band Cigarettes After Sex additionally cancelled a live performance in Bengaluru owing to “technical difficulties” blamed on “local production”.
Avid concert-goer Sheldon Aranjo grabbed public consideration in December by writing a public put up after wetting himself at a Bryan Adams present, saying there was a scarcity of bathrooms.
“We are bringing international acts, we are paying on par with people abroad,” he instructed AFP. “Why can’t I expect an international quality event?”
But organisers equivalent to Tej Brar, who oversees one in all India’s greatest music festivals, NH7, stated they have been “teething issues”.
“These are just growing pains, as we come into our own as an industry,” Brar stated.
And EVA Live’s Choudhary was assured success will convey funding and assist India “move past infrastructure challenges”.
Economists at Bank of Baroda estimate the spate of exhibits may translate into annual spending of as much as $918 million, as organisers pump cash into native economies and customers shell out on the whole lot from motels to flights.
It is a vibrant spot in an in any other case sluggish economic system.
“We are opening a door for something that is new,” stated Bank of Baroda economist Jahnavi Prabhakar. “This is a big boost, something like we’ve never seen before. It’s a big boom for us.”
© 2025 AFP