Poor concert infrastructure bugs artistes, audiences amid growing popularity

But the excitement was tempered by a stark reality check by Dosanjh himself, who vowed not to perform again until India’s concert infrastructure improves, sparking questions about the country’s ability to host world-class events.

Indians are splurging on concerts, shelling out up to ₹35,000 for top-tier tickets to experience live performances by A-listers like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, who are set to perform in India in early 2025. However, the country’s concert infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with demand, with concerns over inadequate venues, poor sanitation, insufficient parking, crowd management issues, and subpar show production quality worrying artistes, event promoters, industry experts and frequent concert attendees.

During his Dil-Luminati tour concert in Chandigarh on 14 December, Dosanjh expressed frustration over India’s subpar concert infrastructure, declaring he wouldn’t perform live in the country until improvements were made. Specifically, he cited issues with the stage setup, which hindered his ability to connect with certain sections of the audience.

Dosanjh later backtracked on his statement.

Infrastructure woes, organisers’ challenges

While the artistes and their reputation are at stake and bear the brunt of all that goes wrong, the ones who actually encounter and deal with all these issues are the promoters and event organisers. The organisers point out how India lacks the right infrastructure to organise concerts at par with the rest of the world.

In India, the biggest concern is that there aren’t any dedicated arenas for live events or concerts. They are either organised on grounds, cultural centres or in stadiums. While stadiums make for a better venue, acquiring permissions for the same can be a concern for organisers.

“Getting permissions from the authorities for booking stadiums for a concert is an issue. Cricket pitches can’t be tampered with, so in most cases, other sports stadiums are used and some cities just don’t offer their stadiums for events,” said Deepak Choudhary, founder of EVA Live, promoter of Canadian singer Bryan Adam’s show in India.

He expressed concerns over the difficulty of acquiring music licences from Indian rights management companies and collectives.

The challenges also extend to small cities that have a dedicated fan base for several of these artistes. “Smaller cities just don’t have facilities. And while tier-2 cities have stadiums that have been built for IPL, they are very turf dependent because you cannot screw up the pitch. If big developers start building venues, in the long run, they will have such a high monopoly that they will be able to do wonderful events. That is what is needed,” said Roshan Abbas, founder of Kommune, a performing arts collective for storytellers.

Smaller towns face even steeper hurdles due to a lack of basic infrastructure, concert management professionals, and audience conditioning for live experiences, agreed V.G. Jairam, founder of Hyperlink Brand Solutions, an experiential and cultural marketing agency.

“Venues are often makeshift, and technical capabilities are limited. Additionally, sponsorships and ticket pricing in these markets don’t generate enough revenue to justify large-scale investments. This makes it harder for artistes to reach their fan base in these regions, ultimately curbing their growth and engagement,” Jairam said.

He added that there is tremendous potential to improve facilities in these markets. Many small cities have large, passionate fan bases that are underserved. Developing multi-purpose venues with scalable set-ups, fostering partnerships between local governments and private entities, and incentivising regional promoters could be transformative.

By creating cost-efficient but quality-focused solutions, artistes can tap into these audiences more effectively, while cities themselves benefit from the economic boost that live events bring. It’s an opportunity to decentralize India’s live entertainment culture and make it more inclusive, Jairam pointed out.

Economic potential

To be sure, event teams are urging government intervention for incentivising the development of dedicated concert infrastructure in India.

“The government should intervene and help build entertainment spaces like arenas in India dedicated for concerts and live events,” said Aahana Mehta, business head of talent consultancy agency Entertainment Consultant.

“Knowing the current surge in tickets concerts happening in India, these spaces will not just help elevate customer experience but also encourage artistes and organisers to put up more shows like these, which can potentially help further boost tourism,” she added.

According to data from a Bank of Baroda report released early in December, concerts are pushing the Indian economy by boosting spending in tourism and related sectors.

“Our conservative to optimistic estimates suggests a push to spending of around ₹1,600-2,000 crore in the span of last two-three months, from the announcement of these concerts,” said the report.

Rising costs, demand for quality

A lack of appropriate venues isn’t the only concern. Equipment, too, is an issue. Indian concerts run on makeshift infrastructure that has to be assembled by acquiring various components from different vendors.

“Live events abroad generally feature superior infrastructure including better sound, lighting, staging, higher production values, smoother logistics, and more advanced ticketing systems compared to many events in India, especially outside major cities,” said Mohit Bijlani, founder of Team Innovation, the organiser of Karan Aujla’s ‘It Was All A Dream’ show.

“These differences lead to compromised performances due to poor technical capabilities, increased stress from logistical hurdles, limited creative expression, and potential safety concerns,” Bijlani added.

These concerns, coupled with civic issues, logistical shortcomings and security challenges prevent concerts from being value-for-money.

“There are various issues such as that of connectivity of the venue with public transport, dedicated parking spaces, crowd management, security, toilets in sanitary conditions, etc that prevent Indian concerts from being world class, even though they are improving,” said Sye Nihalani, who is a regular at concerts across the globe. “And for the price we pay to attend the concerts in India, we might as well fly to a city like Dubai to get a great experience that is value for money,” she added.

She added that Coldplay ticket prices in the black market went up to around ₹80,000 and at that price, attending the concert in Dubai made more sense.

As the average ticket prices of Indian artistes are gradually rising to level up with their international peers, these issues need to be resolved to sustain audience interest in concerts.

“Earlier, pre-covid, an average ticket price for an Indian artiste that would be around ₹2,500-3,500 has now doubled to ₹5,000-7,000, at par with international artistes like Dua Lipa performing here,” said Aman Kumar, founder of events company White Fox that is organising AP Dhillon’s show. The ticket price could steadily increase to ₹11,000-12,000 on average as these artistes are performing great shows internationally as well, Kumar added.

In order to justify the rising ticket price, infrastructure issues and other concerns need to be dealt with as early as possible for the artistes to deliver their best live performances in the country. On their part, the artistes are also making conscious efforts to make their shows better.

“AP Dhillon, for instance, agreed to take a slight cut in his fee to reinvest into higher production quality instead to give audiences a good experience. The amount we collectively invested into the show could have been used to do five more shows, but we focused on quality over quantity,” Kumar added.