Samir Shukla
The inaugural edition of the eclectic music festival Lollapalooza will be staged in Mumbai from January 26–28, 2023.
BookMyShow, India’s largest ticketing platform, is promoting and co-producing Lollapalooza India, along with global producers Perry Farrell, WME and C3 Presents. India is a price sensitive live music market and the demand for international musical acts has grown in recent years.
According to Billboard, the festival’s Mumbai installment, which will take place at an as-yet unannounced venue “in the center of the city,” will feature around 45 acts playing 20 hours of music across four stages to an audience of 60,000 fans each day. The multi-genre festival will feature a line-up that will comprise 60 percent international artists and 40 percent local acts.
India was chosen as the next destination for the multi-genre festival because it was a large potential market which traditionally has been underserved by U.S. and European acts, C3 Presents partner Charlie Walker told Billboard.
“We’re typically looking for places that aren’t already crowded with large scale, multi-day, multi-genre festivals,” he told Billboard. “If you look at the musical appetite in India in [terms of] streaming consumption, you realize quickly that it’s underserved in live.”
The Indian edition of the festival has been in the works for at least four years, says BookMyShow founder and CEO Ashish Hemrajani, but plans were delayed on account of the pandemic.
“Post-pandemic, the spends on live entertainment have gone up dramatically,” he told Billboard, noting that movie ticket sales have more than doubled pre-pandemic numbers. “There is huge pent-up demand.”
Mumbai-based BookMyShow has previously co-promoted India tours by Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber and U2. For more details, visit lollaindia.com.
