Debut Edition of Virtual IPs Collective ‘Festival of Festivals’ Attracts 25,000 eyeballs

by  EVENTFAQS Bureau Entertainment | August 19, 2020 | Interview

Event Capital BookMyShow Festival of Festivals Deepak Choudhary

Event Capital and BookMyShow hosted the inaugural ‘Festival of Festivals’ (FoF), a curated collection of India’s event IPs (intellectual properties) across genres such as music, food, literature, languages, fashion and more, from 14th to 16th August 2020. 

It featured multiple festivals, adding up to over 20 hours of content. The ticketed event donated 10 percent of proceeds to NGO Anahad, to support artistes involved in live entertainment impacted by the pandemic. This was routed through BookMyShow’s charity initiative BookASmile.

Presented by Reliance Digital and co-powered by Hungama, the Broadcast Partner for FoF was MTV.

The event managed to attract 25,000 eyeballs across the three days, reveals Deepak Choudhary, Founder and Director, Event Capital, and curator of the fest. EVENTFAQS Media caught up with him to know more on the response and challenges faced in the first edition.

What kind of response did you receive from the audience for all three days of the festival?

There were two kinds of audiences that were engaged. One was the regular attendees that attended more than one or two events. The second was the genre-specific ones - those interested in fashion, who only attended fashion related events; pet lovers and owners who only opted for Pet Fed and so on. In this spread, we reached out to different types of target audiences which helped us open the IPs market for all these various brands. We could engage the audiences, they gathered and got entertained. We reached around 25,000 people that bought the tickets. Some viewed it on multi screens like a laptop or a TV and the entire family was watching with them, the total viewership number to which we will not know. 

How much revenue were you able to raise through the Festival of Festivals?

We would not like to get into the specifics of numbers but it definitely did cover the cost. It got shared with the IP owners and the money has gone to charity, this is what the overall breakup was like.

What were the challenges faced while conducting a virtual performance of multiple festivals?

We did not really face challenges on the technical front given the technological advancements. Most of the events were live and had limitations but not challenges; limitations in the sense that we could do limited things, we could not do multi-screening and multi-stage etc. Another is that the audiences who watched the festival on a mobile phone would not have had a great experience compared to those who viewed it on a laptop or television screen. 

There were many big IPs that were part of the Festival of Festivals. How did you manage to showcase the uniqueness of each IP?

The choices we made were all different from each other. We got different IPs from various genres hence keeping their uniqueness intact. This also helped us to simplify the choice a consumer had to make as he/she can simply choose the shows or events they are interested in. So, the choice of IPs automatically differentiated the choice of consumers.

How has the response from sponsors been?

Largely, we had three main sponsors on board, namely Reliance Digital, MTV and Hungama Music. For MTV, they have great content that we will be producing and they will be showcasing. Hungama Music were able to showcase their music content and got a whole new generation of consumers that they were able to engage. And for Reliance Digital, they got a huge marketing push through this platform where they were able to run a discount, got media coverage and were able to promote a campaign over the weekend that did very well. Overall, the response from the sponsors has been great.

(EVENTFAQS Media was a partner to the Festival of Festivals.)

A correction was made - in the usual template.