Daybreak - District isn’t even 2% of Eternal’s business. But it’s enough to rattle Bookmyshow

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Bookmyshow has spent two decades building India's live events business. It organised Coldplay's India tour, controls 70% of online movie ticketing, and has long-term exclusive deals with nearly every major multiplex chain.Then Zomato launched District in August 2024. In its first full year, it quadrupled revenue, edged past Bookmyshow on app downloads, and became the exclusive ticketing partner for half the IPL. It's still losing money. Eternal doesn't seem to mind.Because District isn't trying to beat Bookmyshow at its own game. It's building a different one entirely.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

For 26, District, Zomato's lifestyle app, had big plans. It was going to bring Shakira to India for her debut tour. It was selling tickets for rappers like Kanye West and Flipperachi and even other high-profile international apps. The goal was always clear. This was a way to break into a market that's had a singular gatekeeper for decades. Book my show. Everyone knows this reliance-backed company. It organized Cold Place 2025 India shows,

and it said that the band's Amdabad concert alone generated more than 600 crore rupees in economic impact. So, booking some of these iconic international names seemed like the best way to disrupt that kind of legacy and momentum. But then the geopolitical situation started to look a little shaky. Soon, some events got cancelled, others were pushed, and for a business built on big, splashy events, this should have been a setback. But district wasn't shaken at all. In fact, Akshanth Goyal, Eternal CFO, said on the company's April earnings call

that events are just a part of the company's business and that a few delayed concerts would not impact its outlook. You see, that confidence is not built on nothing. In fact, it's grounded in some pretty strong numbers. In FI26, which was district's first full financial year since its launch in August 2024, it crossed almost a thousand crore rupees in revenue. Now, that is just less than 2% of Eternal stopline.

But in that same amount of time, District's weekly active users have also grown to over 60% of BookMy shows, and that's a company with a two-decade head start. Now, that's partly thanks to the fact that District wasn't really building from scratch. Part of its revenue and user base comes from PATEM's entertainment ticketing business called Insider, which Eternal acquired in 2024. And then there's the ongoing IPL.

It just added more fuel to District's rise when District became the exclusive ticketing partner for 5 out of 10 teams and is now selling tickets for nearly half the league's 70 matches, which is a lot more than Book My Show's 25. But here's the thing. It might sound like District is in exactly the same game as BookMy Show. Actually, it's not. An analyst who tracks the online event space told my colleague Suprit

that while selling tickets is Book My Show's bread and butter, for District, it's just the butter. Its bread is something else entirely. The dining out segment. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Rish Uverkes, and every day of the week,

my co-host, Nikasharman and I will bring you one news story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 25th of May. District's ambition is to own the entire outdoor. business and its strategy reflects exactly that. A former PATM insider executive compared it to a kind of funnel. There's always something for everyone.

At the very top of the funnel are the mega global concerts. They might not be frequent, but they certainly grab headlines and pull the users. In fact, for Doua Lipa's 2024 concert, districts sold nearly 30,000 tickets. Now, it's selling Kanye West's debut India tour with tickets priced between 7,500 and 25,000. $5,000. Then there's the middle layer, which has comedy shows, music gigs and other nightlife events. The final layer has things like dining, activities and sports events. And that's where the volume comes in.

Because booking a badminton court or going out for dinner is a lot more everyday and happens way more often than, say, attending a concert. The former executive also explained that the idea is to have the top of the funnel drive attention while the bottom drives frequency, which means Over the year, the business does look uneven by nature. Even the CFO confirmed that on the earnings call. You see, while Q3 is events heavy, Q1 is IPL heavy, and movies depend entirely on the release calendar.

That results in pretty large quarter-to-quarter swings. Still, the growth is real. Paytium Insider, which was rebranded and folded into district, generated almost 300 crore rupees in FI25. District's revenue has actually quadrupled since then, in just a year. Even then, profitability is actually not the immediate goal for district. You see, district's EBITDA losses widened more than 70% in the latest quarter,

and it's actually expected to stay in the red through FY27. But considering it has nearly 20,000 crore rupees in cash reserves, Eternal isn't at all worried. In fact, it doubled districts overall ad spend to more than 3,000 crore rupees in FY26. For now, the bet is on achieving scale. first. Part of that scale already comes from a structural advantage that district has overbook my show. Restaurants and Zomato's network already used district to manage listings, bookings and payments. Many premium restaurants also host live events regularly, like the Garden Cafe and

Bastion Garden City in Bangalore, for example, making them a pretty natural fit for the platform. Also, this kind of mutually convenient relationship extends to some planned events. For instance, the Dua Lippa and Shakira concerts were tied to Eternals non-profit arm called Feeding India, which made those concerts CSR adjacent events where part of the profits would go to social causes. But as a previously quoted executive told Sir Prith, district still got a huge chunk of the revenue. And not just that. These big ticket events have helped district market itself and attract a large user base without worrying about specific acquisition costs.

And these moves have already begun to show in the numbers. In the past year, District got nearly 24 million Google Play downloads. Edging past BookMy shows 23 million. But you see, District is also thinking beyond the app. In fact, last year, it took over Terraform, which is a 16-acre 17,000 capacity venue in Bangalore. The idea is to own the infrastructure in addition to the ticketing layer and monetize every part of the event experience.

District also has plans for more such venues in other cities. And the urgency for this kind of scale is real, because the space is getting crowded. Swiggy, for example, has an events platform called Scenes that turned profitable in early 2025. Flipkart is also reportedly entering the movie and concert ticketing space this month. District, meanwhile, is still posting losses. Like I mentioned earlier, its abeta deficit has widened significantly in the latest quarter. You see, the window to establish scale is open right now. but it won't always stay that way.

Stay tuned. District strategy looks different because the market it's entering isn't as open as it seems. Bookmai shows Strongest Mode is in the fact that it controls over 70% of online movie ticketing and that grip is very hard to break. It has long-term exclusive deals with multiplex chains like PVR, Cineplex and Asian cinemas. The former insider executive quoted earlier told Supret and I'm quoting here, these contracts run anywhere from 2 to 7 years and they often involve upfront financial support.

They require theatres to root most of the ticket sales through BookMy show along with sharing a portion of the convenience fee. Right now, India has around 10,000 active cinema screens and nearly half of all tickets are still sold at the counter. That leaves about 5,000 screens for online platforms to compete over. But the online movie ticketing market in India is worth just set. $700 million. So is it really worth fighting over?

What worked for district is that it understood pretty early on that it's actually not. For the company, right now movies are more like a feature, not the core business. It's part of the funnel, a reason for users to open the app, but that doesn't mean the app has to be built around it. Jetej Agarwal, the founder of Tree Life, a consulting firm, said that district wants to become the default app for going out. It wants to start with casual dinners and weekend sports and go all the way to concerts. The idea is to tap into something people do every day. Events meanwhile serve a different purpose entirely. They drive visibility and attract sponsorships.

Ticketing revenue is often kind of just a secondary stream. The Indian online event ticketing market is estimated to nearly double to almost $10 billion within a decade. Book My Show has leaned into this growth, both as the ticketing partner and the organiser, behind some of the largest events. Last year alone, it brought in Coldplay and Guns and Roses and even singers like Travis Scott and Ed Sheerin. This February, it also sold

tickets to John Mayer's debut India show in Mumbai. In FI.25, Book My Show Live, which produces its events, generated more than 500 crore rupees in revenue according to the company's filings with the MCA. It's expected to up its game in FI26,

courtesy of all the events it has already organized. But the thing is, Events are harder to monopolize than movies. Because artists can choose the ticketing partners and organizers can easily switch platforms. Add to it the fact that Book My Show has faced criticism for weak customer support and organizer support, that leaves a door wide open for district. Even though right now district might still be half of what Book My Show is in revenue terms and still making losses, in two years, it has still gone from being pretty much non-existent

to an actual formidable threat. And it managed that not by trying to play by its rival's playbook, but by writing a different one altogether. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters, and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the Ken.com and click on the Red Sucritional.

subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Virgis and edited by Rajiv Sien.