Sports
Sport has led the way in making live experiences truly accessible: Siddharth Sharma at FICCI-EY report launch
JioStar’s Siddharth Sharma says access, not attendance, will define the next phase of growth
MUMBAI: The future of live entertainment will not be built in bigger venues but on bigger screens. Digital scale, not physical capacity, will power the next surge, Siddharth Sharma, head of content, sports, JioStar, said at the FICCI-EY M&E Industry Report launch 2026.
Speaking at a panel on the business of live entertainment, Sharma pointed to a decisive shift already underway. While concerts and cultural events are gathering pace, sport has long cracked the code on scale. Mega properties such as the TATA IPL now pull in tens of millions of concurrent viewers on digital platforms, numbers no stadium can contain.
“Sport has led the way in making live experiences truly accessible,” Sharma said, citing multi-language feeds, interactive features, multiple streams and population-scale concurrency as game changers now spilling into entertainment formats.
The playbook is expanding fast. From live streams of Mahashivratri and Ganesh Utsav to immersive storytelling around Ram Navami, platforms are pushing culturally rooted experiences into homes, tilting the model from attendance-led to access-led consumption.
Global concerts, including Coldplay, mark another pivot. Sharma called them inflection points for “made-for-broadcast” experiences, where interactivity, including on-demand camera angles and real-time engagement, extends the event far beyond those in the arena.
“The stadium of the future will not have a pin code. It will be defined by how much control the consumer has over the screen,” Sharma said.
That shift matters in India, where only a sliver of audiences can attend large events physically. Digital amplification stretches reach from thousands on-ground to millions at home, widening access while unlocking deeper engagement.
Personalisation is now the battleground. Platforms are moving away from a one-size-fits-all feed to tailored experiences, language, interface, interactivity and even commerce stitched into the stream. “We are moving from one experience for millions to millions of experiences for each user,” Sharma said, pointing to watch parties and real-time interactions turning viewers into participants.
The next leap, he argued, hinges on mindset. With storytelling, scale and technology converging, platforms and broadcasters can amplify cultural moments beyond physical limits.
Live is no longer a place. It is a screen: limitless, personalised and always on.
