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

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.
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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.
Why stream
BMS makes a bulk of its undisclosed revenue from the estimated 8-10 per cent it gets on ticket sales. “With the pandemic, we hit pause,” says Almeida.
There are no ticket sales happening and no clarity on when full-scale production, release, and exhibition of films, plays or other events will happen. Even when things open up, people might be reluctant to step out, say experts. This means the next six to 12 months, “offer a window of opportunity for live events to be delivered home. The venue changes to BMS. We can serve everyone from Gujarat and Bengaluru to Kanyakumari”, says Almeida.
The pricing depends on the genre, audience, value-additions, et al. For instance, a Naseeruddin Shah play could be streamed live from the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai for say Rs 100 each. This might attract thousands of enthusiasts. Of these, 25 could be platinum tickets for say Rs 1,000 each. These would give viewers the privilege of participating in a post-performance question-and-answer session with Shah. The price point could begin at Rs 50 and could go up to a few thousands for some categories.

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Will this put BMS in conflict with films or theatrical firms? “We are working with theatres to digitise plays. We are collaborating with live event firms to put together events. The content is coming from those partners,” says Almeida. He also points out that BMS has been the co-producer on several large events, such as Ed Sheeran concert and the Disney musical, Aladdin.
Roughly 40 per cent of its revenue comes from advertising and live events, the rest is commission on ticketing. “We are building this (the streaming business) not just for the intervening period but for later as well,” says Almeida.

BMS finds its voice against the govt; supports ordnance factory strike

On Wednesday, trade unions opposing corporatisation of 41 ordnance factories issued a statement declaring the second day of their proposed month-long strike a “massive success”. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is supporting the strike at ordnance factories.
The Bhartiya Pratiraksha Mazdoor Sangh, an arm of the BMS, has joined the strike along with the All India Employees’ Federation and the Indian National Defence Workers’ Federation. Over 100,000 workers have struck work since Tuesday and the unions claimed there was no production in any of the 41 ordnance factories in the last two days.

The BMS joining the strike has come in the wake of the meeting of its national executive in the national capital on August 16, 17 and 18. It passed a resolution that slammed the NITI Aayog for pushing disinvestment of public sector undertaking, or PSUs, and demanded that the government change its economic policies.
It is significant that the BMS has officially joined hands with other central trade unions to oppose corporatisation of the ordnance factory board. During the first five years of the Modi government, the BMS pursued a policy of restrained criticism of the government in its public statements, and kept away from street protests.
The previous term of the Modi government witnessed two nationwide general strikes – on September 2, 2015 and January 8-9, 2019. The BMS did not participate in either. However, other trade unions claimed that BMS workers joined the January 2019 strike in large numbers in several sectors.
Economic slowdown, job losses and Modi government pursuing disinvestment of PSUs aggressively has forced BMS to heed the sentiment among its workers rather than risk erosion of its support base.
The Laghu Udyog Bharati, also affiliated to the RSS, is faced with a similar predicament. The outfit represents thousands of medium, small and micro enterprises, or MSMEs. It held its silver jubilee celebrations on August 16, 17 and 18 in Nagpur, which is also the headquarters of the RSS.
Several union ministers, including Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, attended the event. At the meeting, attended by hundreds of its members from across the country, the Laghu Udyog Bharati was more forceful in its criticism of Modi government's policies towards the sector than it had been between 2014 to 2019. Its chief Jitendra Gupta said the MSME sector has bled in the aftermath of the implementation of the goods and services tax, or GST. The outfit demanded policy changes from the government to spur manufacturing and expressed concern at the economic slowdown.
From 1998 to 2004, led by its founder Dattopant Thengadi, the BMS was the most strident voice, that too from within the Sangh Parivar, against the economic policies of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, particularly its efforts at disinvestment of PSUs. In 2001, the BMS had forced Vajpayee to shift Yashwant Sinha from the finance portfolio.
As the BMS prepares to celebrate Thengadi’s birth centenary next year, it is struggling to find a voice as credible as that of its founder’s within its ranks to oppose the Modi government’s efforts at disinvestment of PSUs. Now that is under pressure from its workers to join protests and strikes initiated by other central trade unions, the BMS leadership seems to be rediscovering the legacy of Thengadi.
The resolution it passed last week focused its attack on the NITI Aayog, but said the government pursuing privatisation was against national interest and would kill India’s manufacturing sector. It also demanded stimulus to revive the auto sector.
The joint statement of trade unions against corporatisation of ordnance factory board, of which a BMS affiliate is a signatory, termed the NDA government’s policy “arbitrary” and accused it of ignoring “all the previous assurances given by the previous defence ministers”.