Photo Credit: Philip Myrtorp
Lollapalooza expands to India in 2023, marking the festival’s debut in Asia.
The inaugural edition of Lollapalooza in India is scheduled for January 28th and 29th, 2023, in Mumbai, featuring 60% international acts. BookMyShow, India’s largest ticketing platform, will promote and co-produce the festival alongside global producers Perry Farrell, WME, and C3 Presents, owned by Live Nation.
Lollapalooza India will take place in Mumbai at a yet-to-be-announced venue “in the center of the city.” It will feature around 45 acts playing 20 hours of music across four stages to a daily audience of 60,000 fans. Lollapalooza first tipped the expansion in a Twitter post earlier today.
Suddenly, Lollapalooza is becoming a global music brand. From its humble Chicago roots, the multi-genre festival has expanded to three countries in South America and three in Europe in the past decade. India, a large potential market traditionally underserved by US and European acts, was chosen as the next destination.
BookMyShow, the Mumbai-based ticketing platform, has previously co-promoted tours in India by Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, and U2. The platform plans to bring Bieber back to the country in October as part of his ongoing Justice world tour.
India struggled for years to encourage big international names to travel to the country of 1.3 billion, but U2’s first-ever concert in Mumbai in 2019 was a sign that India was becoming a legitimate touring market. The country’s streaming revenues grew by 20.6% to $153.2 million in 2020, according to IFPI’s Global Music Report. The growth was attributed mainly to ad-supported revenues.
Now, the question is whether India can pack the consumer-spending power of richer nations like the United States. Currently, streaming platforms draw far lower ARPU (average revenue per user) figures than their counterparts in Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, wealthier pockets of Asia, and the US. That dynamic is likely to spread into festivals, where outlandish ticket prices will be a trickier proposition.