Sports in India – Have We Monetized it enough?

By Kartik Kannan

Sports in India, has over the years has largely been associated with Cricket. Whenever companies look at media buying, it is centred around cricket and Bollywood. Agreed that Cricket is monetizable, much more than other sports, but isn't there a way out for other sports to reach out and grab their share of the eyeballs?

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Pictures like the one above where parents celebrate the accomplishments of their children as sportsperson representing sport for India other than cricket would well become more common if the money for sport was properly utilised and aided in part by the game of cricket.

Taking a closer look at cricket, India has been a nation that had played cricket, football, tennis and hockey since Independence. The only reason cricket stood out then was that cricket was played more often than the other sports. But even then a Santosh Trophy was followed with the same interest as a Deodhar Trophy. Where cricket took a leap was during 1983-85 where India's victories across the world, resulting in increased sales of TV sets, and more eyeballs to follow cricket. It was around the same time that tennis and football matches in important events were televised across the world.

Generation after generation started finding their stars and sports idols (apart from Cricket) in a McEnroe, Sampras, Platini or a Valderrama. India, till the early 90's, was subject to a lot of domestic matches being televised, but once the Satellite television started spreading into India, the common man started to also watch cricket. Soon cricket became a religion due to the number of people following it and the history the sport had. Cricket, thanks to revolutions in the game made by Kerry Packer, survived a dull patch of falling spectatorship and soon floodlit cricket also came to India. Tennis, football, hockey and other sports suffered from lack of commercial aspirations and able administrators. The gap between cricket and the other sports just became bigger as the years went by.

So today when Abhinav Bindra endorses a brand, he is judged on his value to aiding brand recall in the short term. The fact that he won the Gold medal would stay etched for 6 more months and after that people would get back to giving their attention to national heroism that would most probably come from cricket.

So what can be done to heal the ailing non-cricket sports in India? If sports channels can have exclusive cricket channels, they would, also, like to create newer markets for themselves over the longer term in terms of establishing niche channels for a sport alone. A channel for football or hockey could just be the solution to satisfy the cash strapped sports federation and also prevent exodus of sportsmen to cricket because of the money. Sports like Kho-Kho, Tennis, Football or Hockey need to be revamped to suit commercial interests and that could get more viewers, which means more bang for the buck for the niche sports television channels. The belief needs to be reinforced that sports in non cricketing fields is also about living up to your aspirations. The feeling of watching a winner in a Vijender or a Abhinav, can still reinforce a vicarious feeling of outperforming oneself for the viewer.

There are a lot of brand visibility opportunities for other federations if they take the help of BCCI to arm-twist sports television channels into also investing a percentage of their media spend into some other sport as a package deal. What the IPL did to cricket, can at least give Indian football a facelift when the best talent plays along with the Indian football stars on a similar league. Sports helps a certain brand connect with consumers and acts as a PR driver in other countries, and in India, if the awareness is taken care off, the rest can just follow in terms of the respective sports federations getting cash into their coffers. BCCI could actually revamp the state of Indian sports by scheduling other sports events parallel to their own calendar and sell more commercial television airtime by acting as a marketing agent for development of other sports. Whether this would happen is a question, but if sports marketers want to break through the clutter in advertising, they must find a way of coordinating with television events on sports channels and the activities and events organized by other sports federations. The next time, when cricket airtime is sold, and another non cricketing sport is ignored, the television channel should have to look not only at asking itself what percentage of the market it has grabbed in doing so but also, ask itself what is the possible market that it can expand into.