The Economics Behind Why Festival Lineups Look the Way They Do

India’s live music circuit is undeniably in the middle of its most consequential shift yet. For years, global tours treated the country as optional. That has changed. Stadium shows are selling out, multi-city runs are viable, and festivals are beginning to look outward with real intent. Coldplay, Guns N’ Roses, stadium tours, global DJs, alternative bands, and hip-hop collectives are no longer anomalies here. India is now part of the global touring conversation in a way that finally mirrors audience demand.

With that progress has come a criticism that is loud, emotive, and partially justified: that Indian festival line-ups remain overwhelmingly male. The imbalance is visible, and I agree it is frustrating. However, what is far less visible, yet far more consequential, is understanding how festival bookings actually function. Much of the discourse around representation has flattened a complex, capital-intensive ecosystem into a question of intent alone, overlooking the economics that underpin these line-ups and reducing structural decisions to moral ones.

Festivals do not operate like playlists or editorial calendars. They are financial structures built on ticketing certainty, risk mitigation, and return on investment. Live Nation has repeatedly outlined in its annual investor reports and earnings calls that major headliners drive a disproportionate share of early ticket sales and overall demand, often determining the commercial viability of large-scale live events before the undercard acts are finalized. That single booking decision shapes everything that follows, from secondary budgets to sponsor confidence to the level of financial risk a promoter can realistically absorb.

This is why headliners are not booked on the basis of cultural merit alone. They are booked on leverage. A globally dominant act that can sell tens of thousands of tickets irrespective of the undercard effectively stabilizes the entire festival. That certainty allows promoters to cap spends elsewhere, take chances on emerging acts, and survive in a market where margins are increasingly fragile. Pollstar’s year-end touring data consistently reflects this reality, showing that artists who dominate live circuits do so because of touring scale and global demand coherence rather than streaming popularity alone.

This distinction often gets lost when streaming data is pulled into the conversation without context. Spotify charts are frequently used to argue that women dominate popular music and should therefore dominate festival stages. Consumption, however, is not the same as mobilization. IFPI’s Global Music Report has repeatedly highlighted that streaming reflects listening behaviour, not the willingness of audiences to travel, commit months in advance, and pay premium ticket prices. Festival economics depend on the latter, not passive consumption.

This is where many well-meaning arguments begin to unravel. Take the frequently repeated suggestion that major Indian women artists should naturally headline large festivals. Artistic stature is not up for debate, but from a booking perspective, timing and scarcity matter. An artist who has already played 15 to 20 Indian markets in a single year is no longer a rare draw, and keeping that in mind, the urgency disappears. From a festival standpoint, that booking no longer adds incremental ticket value, especially when the audience has likely seen the same show recently at a lower price point.

Layered onto this is the way touring economics function locally. Much of India’s legacy live ecosystem still operates on fixed per-show fees rather than offer-based negotiations, while global touring decisions are shaped by routing logic, scale efficiencies, and long-term market value. If a festival internally caps a secondary headline slot at a specific figure to keep the day financially viable, exceeding that number destabilises the entire balance sheet. At that point, the decision is commercial, not ideological.

This reality is explained by Nayantara Shetty, co-founder of Misfits Inc., who notes that the absence of women headliners at large festivals is rarely a matter of unwillingness. “I think it’s important to understand that the absence of women headliners at some large festivals is rarely about a lack of intent from promoters. Whether it’s BookMyShow Live, SkillBox, District, or any of the major festival producers operating in India today, the real conversation sits around economics, risk, and scale,” she says. “Festival line-ups are shaped by ticketing expectations, sponsorship commitments, artist availability, touring costs, and the ability of a headliner to draw large crowds across markets consistently. In a price-sensitive, still-maturing live ecosystem like India, promoters have to balance representation with commercial viability.”

Shetty adds that the imbalance reflects deeper structural gaps rather than booking-stage bias. “Historically, ticket-selling power at scale hasn’t been evenly distributed across genders. That gap wasn’t created overnight, and it can’t be fixed at the booking stage alone,” adding, “If the industry genuinely wants to see more women headlining festivals, the conversation has to move beyond calling out line-ups. We need sustained investment in artist development, smarter touring strategies, long-term audience building, and brand partnerships that allow festivals to take calculated risks.”

Another assumption that rarely survives scrutiny is the idea that women are not being booked because they are not being offered slots. They are — repeatedly. What is not publicly visible are the declines. Artists turn down festivals for reasons that have little to do with gender: mismatched album cycles, inefficient Asian routing, expensive one-off travel, or prioritising solo tours. High-profile male artists make the same decisions. Touring is a logistical operation, not a cultural statement.

As Naman Pugalia, Chief Business Officer of Live Events at BookMyShow, explains, festival curation is a year-long exercise shaped by multiple variables rather than a single cultural agenda. “The curation of festivals involves numerous moving parts,” he says, including global routing feasibility, researching emerging and established artists, and mapping those names against Indian audience appetite, streaming trends, and on-ground consumption patterns. “Building a festival line-up is ultimately a synthesis of all of this.”

Where a genuine structural concern remains is further down the line-up. Large festivals require a deep, consistent mid-tier ecosystem: artists who release regularly, tour actively, grow across editions, and operate flexibly within offer-based models. India currently lacks enough women artists developed at every scalable tier to reliably populate 50 or 60-act festival line-ups year after year. This is not a reflection of talent. It highlights gaps in development pathways, management strategy, touring infrastructure, and long-term market investment.

At the same time, Indian festival audiences have consistently responded to women artists across stages. Pugalia points to performances by Halsey, Anoushka Shankar, Kayan, Dot., Japanese Breakfast, Raveena, Kehlani, Fatoumata Diawara, Aurora, Lisa Mishra, Mali, and others as moments that have actively redefined expectations and influenced how festival programming continues to evolve.

None of this is to suggest that sexism does not exist. It does — particularly in audience behaviour, online discourse, and the safety burdens women artists disproportionately carry. Ignoring those realities would be inaccurate. But assigning the full weight of structural gender imbalance to festival promoters alone oversimplifies the problem and ultimately stalls progress.

It’s possible to acknowledge the gender gap on Indian festival stages while recognising that bookings are driven by economics, routing logic, and risk management. These positions are not contradictory. They are necessary for a constructive conversation.

If the goal is to see more women headlining festivals in India, the path forward lies in building touring ecosystems that support long-term growth, flexible deal-making, sustained releases, and consistent audience development. That potential was visible in Tyla’s recent headliner set in Mumbai, where the scale of the on-ground response demonstrated what happens when the right artist, timing, and infrastructure align. A similar impact was evident during Dua Lipa’s headline performance at Zomato’s Feeding India Concert last year, which drew one of its largest turnouts and reaffirmed that global women pop acts can anchor large-format events decisively when positioned correctly.

Meaningful progress comes from collaboration across the industry and from growing the ecosystem in ways that allow headline opportunities to emerge sustainably and repeatedly rather than sporadically. Until those foundations are strengthened, demanding change at the top will continue to clash with financial reality.

Ultimately, understanding the system is not the same as defending it. But without understanding it, nothing about it truly changes.