It was well past midnight in July when the lights inside PVR INOX auditoriums across the country stayed on for a football match instead of a film. The FIFA World Cup final had kicked off deep into the night, hours after most cinemas would ordinarily have shuttered for the day. Sixty-four thousand people bought tickets anyway, filing into multiplexes not to watch a new release but to watch two teams they had no ticket to see in the stadium.
For an industry built entirely around the release calendar, that is a strange sight, and an increasingly common one. Cricket World Cups, football finals, stand-up specials and concert simulcasts are turning up on multiplex screens with growing regularity, alongside the usual mix of new films and re-releases. The question the industry is now asking itself is whether this is a genuine second business, or simply a way to keep the lights on and the popcorn moving on weeks when the film slate has nothing to offer.
Speaking on the company's Q1FY27 earnings call, PVR INOX Managing Director Ajay Bijli made the ambition explicit, describing the chain's ongoing effort to build itself into an out-of-home entertainment destination that people visit for more than just movies. He was careful to add that films remain the mainstay of the business, but said the FIFA screenings in particular had proven their commercial worth rather than functioning as a goodwill gesture, adding that the numbers had shown up on the bottom line.
That framing—mainstay plus something extra—is roughly where most exhibitors have landed on the question, though the shape of the ‘something extra’ varies from one chain to the next.
At Cinépolis, the calculus starts with audience demand and cultural relevance rather than any fixed content quota. Ashish Mishra, Head of Commercialisation at the chain, says the intent is to bring audiences together around content that creates a strong sense of community, whether that is a major sporting fixture, a concert, a comedy set or a fan-driven experience. Alternative content of this kind still accounts for a modest 3-4% of the chain's overall attendance, Mishra says, but its value isn't confined to that slice of the box office. It also strengthens engagement and gives audiences a reason to walk in on days a new film isn't the draw, while opening up parallel revenue lines in food and beverage, brand partnerships and advertising.
Miraj Entertainment has taken a similar view, layering live sport and classic re-releases into its programming rather than treating either as a sideshow. Sameer Munshi, COO at Miraj, points to the response the chain's IPL and FIFA World Cup screenings have drawn, alongside a steady appetite for iconic re-released titles that let audiences relive them on the big screen. What has caught Munshi's attention is less the events themselves than the audience they pull in — sports enthusiasts, music fans, families and younger viewers who don't necessarily show up for a Friday release, and who tend to turn out on weekdays and non-traditional movie hours when auditoriums would otherwise sit empty. That shift in occupancy is, in Munshi's telling, where the real commercial case lies: longer, more social, occasion-driven formats that lift food and beverage spending, and open the door to sponsorships and experiential marketing tied to specific fan communities. He describes alternate content as a complementary revenue stream rather than a substitute for the core film business, one that gives audiences more reasons to walk in through the year.
If exhibitors are approaching this from the screen outward, live entertainment companies are approaching it from the stadium inward, and increasingly meeting somewhere in the middle. Gareth Thomas, Business Head at Z Live, sees cinemas less as a substitute for stadiums and auditoriums than as an extension of their reach — a way to take a concert, a comedy show or a fan screening beyond the physical limits of a single venue and into cities where audiences would otherwise have no access to it at all. Premium cinema infrastructure, in his view, also lets organisers extend the commercial life of a live property well past its original one-night run. The formats that travel best to a multiplex screen, Thomas says, tend to be the ones with strong fan communities already built in — concerts, comedy, esports and live sport — and making them commercially viable depends on production quality, careful rights coordination and a genuinely collaborative approach between organisers, exhibitors and content partners.
Sheetal Birla, General Manager India at Live Your City, frames the opportunity in similar terms but is more explicit about what has to be true for it to work. Cinemas succeed as a live-entertainment venue, she says, specifically for formats where the value sits in collective participation rather than physical proximity to the performer—concert simulcasts, fan screenings, one-night events that can play out across several cities at once. What makes the model work, in Birla's telling, is not attempting to recreate the live experience but extending its reach and commercial life instead. That said, she's clear that a cinema screening will only pull audiences out of their homes if it feels distinctly different from watching the same content on a television or a phone—through hosted elements, fan interaction, themed food and beverage, merchandise or artist access that make the evening feel like an event rather than a broadcast. Birla also flags patience as a real constraint: isolated screenings might draw a curious crowd once, but building repeat attendance and improving venue economics needs a consistent, credible pipeline of high-quality events rather than one-off experiments.
Put together, the voices across exhibition and live entertainment are converging on a similar answer to the question the industry keeps circling: this isn't a hedge dressed up as a strategy, but it isn't a replacement for the film business either. It functions as a genuine complement—one that fills weekday afternoons and post-midnight slots the release calendar was never built to use, pulls in audiences the multiplex wouldn't otherwise see, and opens up advertising, sponsorship and F&B revenue that has nothing to do with a film's opening weekend. Whether it becomes a durable second business rather than a scatter of well-attended one-offs will depend on exactly what Birla points to—sustained, curated programming rather than a single blockbuster sporting night—and on exhibitors and live-entertainment partners continuing to build that pipeline together rather than treating it as a one-time experiment.
For now, though, the door swinging open past midnight for a football final that has nothing to do with a film release is as good a sign as any that the multiplex's idea of its own business is changing.
