India’s ₹13,000-crore live events industry is increasingly becoming a powerful platform for experiential marketing as brands seek deeper consumer engagement. A report by EY-Parthenon and BookMyShow found that 78% of Indian consumers prioritise experiences over products, with live events significantly improving brand recall and purchase intent. More than half of surveyed brands conducted experiential activations, while 88% plan to continue investing.
As traditional advertising loses impact, brands across sectors are integrating with concerts, festivals and cultural platforms to create immersive brand interactions. The study also highlights the wider economic and cultural impact of large scale live events.
India’s live events industry, valued at ₹13,000 crore, is rapidly evolving into a key platform for brands as marketers increasingly adopt experiential marketing to enhance consumer engagement and drive purchase intent. According to a report by EY-Parthenon and BookMyShow titled Beyond Attention. Into Immersion, Indian consumers are showing a clear preference for experiences over products, with 78% indicating they prioritize spending on experiences. This shift toward participation-led consumption is influencing brand strategies across sectors.
The study, based on post-event surveys of 7,450 attendees, revealed that live events are highly effective in promoting brand recall and purchase intent. About 59% of attendees remembered brands they interacted with during events, while 55% reported higher intent to purchase after on-ground engagement.
Events such as concerts, festivals, comedy tours, and cultural showcases are becoming high-intent environments where brands can connect with audiences through immersive experiences rather than relying on traditional advertising. The report emphasized that as interruption-based marketing loses impact, audience participation has emerged as the new metric of brand relevance.
Experiential marketing in India is now recognized as a holistic growth engine rather than a tactical add-on. Evidence of its effectiveness includes the fact that 63% of attendees felt that brands enhanced their overall event experience, and 29% reported improved brand perception after interacting with brands at events.
Across sectors including BFSI, FMCG, beauty, fashion, beverages, mobility and technology, brands are increasingly integrating with cultural and entertainment ecosystems instead of relying exclusively on sponsorships, the report noted.
For instance, RuPay and Kotak Mahindra Bank focused on enhancing access and convenience during high-demand events. Brands like H&M, Budweiser 0.0, Nivea, and Vicks leveraged festival ecosystems to foster discovery and community engagement. Nykaa, the Beauty platform, in partnership with BookMyShow Live, created Nykaaland, an experiential intellectual property designed to enable immersive brand discovery. Visa, Diageo, and Hyundai used experiential formats to reinforce premium and youth-oriented positioning.
The report also introduces the Experiential Impact Pyramid, a framework helping marketers move from audience insights to participation-led engagement and long-term cultural relevance.
As India’s live entertainment ecosystem expands, the report suggests that consistent investment in experience-led marketing positions brands to build enduring consumer relationships. The framework encourages marketers to look past impressions and focus on building emotional connections, brand loyalty, and long-term cultural relevance.
Experiential marketing spending worldwide is expected to reach US$ 130 billion by 2025, expanding at a rate of 10.5%, with 74% of Fortune 1000 marketers planning to increase their budgets, the report noted. In India, the momentum is driven by a growing live entertainment ecosystem and brands’ desire for deeper consumer engagement.
According to the EY-Parthenon–BookMyShow CMO survey, more than half of brands executed experiential activations in the past year, and 88% of brands that invested in the past 12 months intend to continue in a more structured manner. Nearly 44% of brands that increased experiential marketing spending in the last three years reported growth of up to 30%, the report said.
The report noted that brands are leveraging experiential marketing to pursue a range of goals, including brand awareness (67%), product sampling and trials (56%), sales growth (56%), and brand storytelling (44%).
Despite growing interest, the report highlighted that several companies have not implemented experiential marketing at scale because of factors such as limited expertise (71%), budget pressures (57%), and measurement challenges (43%).
India’s live entertainment sector is entering a period of rapid expansion, driven by growing demand for high-quality, in-person experiences. The socio-economic study conducted by EY on Diljit Dosanjh’s Dil Luminati Tour 2024, illustrates this momentum, drawing more than 320,000 attendees across 13 cities and emerging as one of the largest Indian concert tours in recent years. The speed at which tickets sold out in both metropolitan and non-metropolitan markets reflects a widening appetite for large-scale live music events across the country. Notably, nearly half of the attendees came from Tier-II and Tier-III cities, highlighting how fandom, mobility, and consumer spending are increasingly distributed beyond India’s largest urban centres.
A key takeaway from the analysis is the substantial economic impact generated by major concert Atours. The Dil Luminati tour produced an estimated economic footprint of nearly Rs 950 crore through direct revenues, indirect spending, and government receipts. This reflects a broader trend in which large live events function as economic multipliers, stimulating sectors such as tourism, hospitality, retail, and transportation. Concerts therefore extend their influence well beyond ticket sales and venue activity.
The employment impact of such events is also significant. Large music concerts create extensive temporary and project-based work across logistics, security, stage production, event management, and other support services. In this case, the tour generated more than 118,000 man-days of employment across various operational and ancillary roles.
For host cities, this demonstrates how well-planned live entertainment events can energise local ecosystems, generate income opportunities, and attract visiting audiences.
Economic analysis within the report indicates that concerts of this scale create a threefold multiplier effect across the broader economy. While ticketing revenues and on-site food and beverage spending represent the most visible layer of activity, a large portion of the financial impact comes from secondary and tertiary spending. This includes travel, accommodation, tourism experiences, personal care, shopping, gig work, and extensive brand activations linked to the event.
Beyond financial outcomes, the tour also demonstrated the cultural power of live performances. By incorporating local attire, city-specific references, and Punjabi cultural elements, each concert celebrated regional identity and community. Such cultural integration helps transform concerts into platforms for cultural exchange and regional pride, while also influencing tourism through social media visibility and storytelling.
The tour also highlighted evolving marketing strategies within India’s live entertainment ecosystem. Brands associated with the concerts experimented with experiential campaigns, city-specific digital content, and ticket-linked promotions, signalling a shift from traditional sponsorship models toward deeper audience engagement. For marketers, this underscores the importance of authenticity, cultural alignment, and hyper-local storytelling.
India’s rapidly growing live events ecosystem reflects a shift in how brands approach consumer engagement. With audiences increasingly prioritising experiences, companies are moving beyond conventional advertising to adopt immersive, experience-led marketing strategies. Live events provide brands with opportunities to build stronger emotional connections while also generating broader economic benefits through tourism, employment and local spending. However, unlocking the full potential of experiential marketing will require greater industry expertise, improved measurement frameworks and sustained investment. With the right ecosystem in place, live entertainment could play a significant role in shaping India’s evolving experience-driven economy.
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