Development of the beautiful game in India: A strategic perspective

Abstract

Football is the most popular sport in the worldi. It's also one of the most revenue generating sport. Just to take an example, the English Premier League has a viewership of 600 million homes (202 countries) and revenue of over 2 billionii Euros. TV broadcast rights alone brings in a revenue of GBP 920.7miii (2008/09) to the league. The question here is, what has this got to do with our cricket crazy nation? As it happens, football is the second most popular sport in India. Not based on the country's performance on the field, but the sheer amount of viewership. The 2010 FIFA football world cup was watched by 20miv viewers from India! This was a 35% increase from the 2006 edition. Whopping 83mv Indian viewers follow different football events across the world. As is clearly evident, it's a gold mine for advertisers. With this much popularity and revenue generating opportunity, why is our nation languishing at the 145th placevi in the latest FIFA football country rankings? This is where our study focuses on. We need to understand why the development of the game in our country has been at best stagnant. We also need to understand, given the opportunities, why has not the game prospered economically. From the success of IPL, we can clearly see that there is a scope for the same. With a population of over 1.18bvii, of which around 65%viii are below the age of 35, the market opportunities for the game in India are huge. If the popularity of the game is leveraged successfully, it can be one of the most revenue generating industry in the country, similar to cricket. A critical point to be noted here is that, cricket gained the present day popularity after India won the 1983 world cup. But the same will hold true for football only if India performs on the field. For this, development and nurturing of young talent is a major step forward. India, being the 2nd most populous country in the world, should definitely face no dearth of talent. The key would be in identifying the talents at a very young age, encouraging and developing them to become top class footballers. There is also a lack of a sound talent scouting system in India, which has directly resulted in an under-development of quality football academies for youth. It is out of such academies that successful footballing nations have produced a number of world class footballers. An encouraging sign has been the recent investments of European football clubs in India to develop the country's talent. The key is for the domestic authorities to build upon such initiatives and adapt successful models from across the world. Only such development across the country, coupled with the ultimate goal of successes at the international arena can push the sport out from being contained in just the metros and football crazy states like West Bengal, Kerala, Goa and Manipur. Thus, it all comes down to the development and promotion of the game in our country. Through this study, we will try to chalk out a strategic roadmap for the same.