44% of Indian live-event fans seek emotional healing at shows

Music is the setlist; healing is the promise. BookMyShow Live’s new report, OOO: Offline. Outdoors. Out Loud. – Live Season 25/26, Decoded, asked nearly 1,700 concert and festival-goers across 75 Indian cities what really drives them to a live show. The answer moves far beyond the artist on the poster.

Concert-going has become routine rather than rare. Eight in ten respondents said it is a regular part of their lives. But the reasons are telling. Fifty-one per cent attend because they have followed an artist’s journey for years. Only 4% say FOMO is what pulls them in.

“there are some things technology cannot manufacture – the feeling of belonging to a moment, together,” Naman Pugalia, chief business officer – Live Events at BookMyShow, said in the report.

Emotional healing is an actual purchase motive

Forty-four per cent of respondents attended a live show hoping to feel emotionally healed. Sixty-six per cent feel their biggest chills when the entire crowd sings a chorus together, and 56% have experienced a moment of connection with a stranger at a live event.

For marketers, these are not soft metrics. They reposition the live show as an emotional utility. A ticket is not just access to music; it is a consumer hiring an experience to manufacture belonging, release and collective feeling.

The ritual around the ticket

BookMyShow Live also mapped behaviour beyond the ticket scan. Before the show: group chats, outfit planning, countdowns. After the show: replays, conversations, photographs, setlist searches. The purchase is not the end; it is the middle of a ritual.

What to steal from the study

• Lead with the story, not scarcity. Artist familiarity is 51%; FOMO is nearly irrelevant at 4%.
• Design shared moments. A crowd singing together gives 66% their biggest chills, so build for collective peak experiences.
• Market the emotional outcome. 44% want healing—brands can speak to release and belonging, not just entertainment.
• Treat the line-up as a discovery channel. 72% found a new artist at a BookMyShow Live show during the season.

Why this matters beyond live events

Live entertainment is one of the clearest laboratories for belonging-based buying. If nearly half the audience comes for healing and fewer than one in twenty for hype, the lesson travels to every category: consumers do not always want urgency; they want to feel something they could not produce alone.

Source: Afaqs!