Sports Marketing in India

India first experienced sports marketing on a grand scale when the late Mark Mascarenhas & World Tel signed Sachin Tendulkar for a whopping $ 1 billion way back in 1996. It was the first time that Indian sports landscape had an experience with sports marketing at this price point.

Sports marketing in India has evolved over the years. However compared to international opportunities in sports marketing, the opportunities in India are restricted to organizing events, selling sponsorships & ads for the sports properties & individuals. These restricted opportunities in sports marketing can be largely attributed to the role played by various governing bodies in India. However for the first time, in form of Indian Premier League ( IPL ) Indian sports in any form has seen participation from independent entities who have invested heavily in the game . IPL has brought into vogue many new aspects of sports marketing. We now see cricketing teams advertising across mediums, merchandise created for fans to buy. Teams are putting in efforts to create a connect with the fans through various other initiatives & contests.

The nascent nature of sports marketing in the country has lead to traditional agencies trying to fill in to the role that is played by sports marketing agencies internationally. Therefore we have advertising agencies creating brand identities for sports teams in India without any prior experience. We have independent sports agents that are creating a vision statement for the game when there core competency is in managing player endorsements. We have team owners taking over the ownership of setting up their sports brands without any inputs from international consultants.

Indian sports industry is worth $ 4-5 billion currently. The huge population of over a billion people in India can increase the size of the industry multi fold in next few years. This is a reason that is strong enough for the stake holders to move up the value chain and offer an integrated approach to the domain of sports marketing.

It will not be long before we see an advent of niche international sports consultants tapping into the Indian sports marketing pie.