BookMyShow checks in to India's crowded streaming party with live events

Sunburn Home Festival, the virtual edition of the electronic dance music festival, is among the first events BookMyShow Online will stream live.

In the streaming video rush comes a new creature this week: BookMyShow (BMS) Online is a streaming platform for live events. Sunburn Home Festival, the virtual edition of Asia’s biggest electronic dance music festival, is among the first events it will stream live on July 10-11. You can pay Rs 99 for a day or Rs 199 for both days.

BMS Online also conducts a virtual musical talent discovery show with Kailash Kher as judge. The finalé will be streamed live on July 7. Other upcoming events include the India shows of Doncaster (South Yorkshire) band Bang Bang Romeo and London-based band Electric Enemy. There are theatre workshops with veterans like Puneet Issar, Rohini Hattangadi, Rakesh Bedi, and Anant Mahadevan. These are among the first of many concerts, events, and workshops lined up by India’s largest ticketing portal in its bid to ride out the pandemic storm.

In a normal year, BMS sells 200 million tickets of movies, plays, and other events. “We have always been the de-facto place for consumers to discover out-of-home,” says Albert Almeida, chief operating officer, BMS.

To stay connected with its user base during the lockdown, BMS began “delivering content and experiences at home”, says Almeida. It facilitated the discovery, registration, and reach for over 750 events, such as Live From HQ (music, comedy, spoken word), Theatre Live (drama, monologues, theatre, reading), Vodafone #RechargeForGood (music), among others. Close to 4 million people saw these events in the first month of the lockdown, claims the firm. Currently close to half a million viewers log into these virtual events every week. Note that all of these were free. “We saw great affinity for comedy, music, international artistes, and upskilling through master classes,” says Almeida.

Armed with these insights, BMS started moving some of these events to pay in the latter part of June. Now about two-thirds all such events are behind paywall. With BMS Online, everything is pay.