16 Sept 2014, Delhi: With less
than a month time’s left for the pilot season of the Indian Super League- the
first franchise based football tournament of the country- scheduled to kick-off
on 12th October 2014, Football is going to be the next buzz word in
the country at least for the next 3 months (and hopefully the buzz would multiply after that).
With the mood all set as the countdown to the high profile tournament has
already begun, Sportz Power organised "India Football Forum 2014" at the India
Habitat Centre in the national capital, Delhi on Tuesday. SportzPower is the
internet brand from Sportz Network Pvt Ltd, a company operating in the areas of
media, marketing and events in India's fast developing sports industry.
Keeping the primary theme as “Tapping
The Latent Potential Of A Billion+ Market” in context of Football, the event
was organized in the form of multiple knowledge sessions and panel discussions.
The forum marked the presence of the top bosses/heads of major football administrative
bodies– like FIFA, AIFF and I-League etc, sponsors, broadcasters, partners and
Football club owners who all came under one umbrella with an agenda to discuss
on the current state of the India Football, the challenges that they face as stakeholders in promoting, marketing and capitalizing this sport to the level it could reach, and the
plans that they have to overcome these hurdles.
The session
started with keynotes from Mr. Kushal Das, General Secretary, AIFF (All India
Football Federation). He talked about how AIFF’s move to get corporate interest
in the I-league, India’s top tier club tournament, has been a positive step in
the direction of the overall development of the Football as a sport in the
nation. And with FIFA declaring India as the host to the under-17 World Cup in
the 2017, the need for the push and collaborative effort of all the
associations and federations to develop and promote this sport from the
grassroots level has become all the more important.
This was followed by the
announcement of the Star Sport India, the broadcasting partner of the ISL, that
the matches would be broadcasted in 5 regional languages of the country. This
is a great news for the investors and stakeholders who are working day in and
out to popularize the sport in every corner of the country. Not only would
this help in bringing a larger viewership to the ISL but would also contribute in
promoting the Indian Football at the grassroots level.
Mr. Ayaz Memon, eminent sports
writer and commentator, playing the moderator was able to dig and host an interesting
session from his panel. The parties sitting in the panel included Sunando Dhar,
CEO, I-league; Chirag Tanna, Head of Operations, Pune FC; Viren D’Silva, GM,
Kerala Blasters FC, Nikhil Sharma, Director at Shillong Lajong FC, Sukhvinder
Singh, MD, Libero Sports India. While all the parties involved had their own
unique approach and vision for the development of professional football in
India, they all shared the same goal of nourishing the football culture in India.
The opinions were divided on ISL vs I-League – which format would work best to
realise their common GOAL. Chirag Tanna from the Pune FC feels that from the
entertainment and viewership point of view, ISL would get eyeballs on media platforms and
footfalls to the stadium, but he was doubtful on how relevant it would be for development
of the sport as such. Their side also felt that revenue-wise too, they were not
too sure to invest in ISL and thus, Pune FC decided to not participate in the
pilot season. Rather, they would like to wait and watch and at the same time
keep focus on their commitment to the I-League. For Sukhwinder Singh, ISL is
going to be like a big fat Indian Wedding and he is sure that with the kind of
sponsors and marketing team ISL has at its back, they would definitely be able
to put up a great show. For him, I-League, on the other hand, is like life after
marriage which will need serious commitment for its success. He did not take any
sides but hopes that all the energy, interest and enthusiasm that the ISL
brings to the game is properly harnessed for the development of the sport.
Sunando Dhar shared how a few years back they were facing serious issues and
challenges of promoting the sport at the grassroots level. But with some great
reformative measures like licensing of more and more football clubs and strong focus
on promoting the club cultures, the scene has greatly improved both infrastructure-wise
as well as in terms of developing interest at the local level. He has nothing
against ISL, in fact, he feels I-League would get a lot to learn from the ISL
about the marketing aspects of the game. Nikhil Sharma, director at Shillong
Lajong FC, expressed his disappointment on the fact that football is not seen
as a lucrative career in India because of the wrong perception. According to
him, Indian professional players receive almost at par match fees from the
clubs as in the developed nations in West. But the challenge still remains to
bring the awareness and change the wrong perception. Chirag Tanna added that
another major challenge is the difficulty in pooling children who are under-10 and
under-12 as factors like education and distance from home of the clubs plays a
major role in the parent’s decision. He really wishes that every Indian city should
have its own club and work towards bringing one if it doesn’t have it yet. They
should learn the lesson from Pune FC. The city didn’t have its own club at all till
recently and now they have a very good performing club at I-League.
The discussion then moved towards
on how due to a lack of common national hero and face representing India at the
global and more popular European leagues like EPL and Spanish League, the Indian Youth still
doesn’t have a role model who could drive their commitment and motivation level
towards the sport to the standards which are required to compete on a global stage.
In another panel discussion and
presentation towards the end, Mr. Vinit Karnik, from the GroupM, threw light on
the business and commercial aspects of the game and the growing importance of
the digital media in driving the interest in sports market where football is a
distant no.2. He talked about the importance of nurturing and developing the
fans in any game. With the growing number of media platforms- the advent of the
social networking, phablets and mobile technology- fans are the real time
content generators and marketers of the game. Thus, it has become all the more
important to nurture fans – and not just from the traditional point of views. But
the question that left unanswered was - Whose responsibility is it to nurture
the fans??..Football club owners were not able to answer clearly on what exactly are they doing
exclusively for the fans. Why couldn’t they follow models like fan owned clubs
as in West. One plausible answer was that it is still too early in India to
talk about fan owned clubs when there are not enough fans in the first place
and not great world class teams and performances that fans would look upto. The
bitter and sad truth is that even though we have more than 100 years of
football legacy with tournaments like Durand Cup (world’s 3rd oldest
football tournament), we stand 150th in the global football FIFA rankings
today. But it’s not the case that nothing is being done to cater to fans. Clubs
like Pune FC shared that they are taking initiatives on Social Media to connect
to fans in efforts to build the fan base and they also run campaigns and
contests to keep fans engaged.
Lastly, some interesting figures came up when Mr. Aneesh Madani, Head, Sports Partnership Twitter India,
showed in his presentation that India is the country which spends about 18
hours per week consuming sports – more than any other country in the world. These
figures reiterate the latent potential that sports industry has in the market
of billion plus population. The question
remains how well Indian industry would be able to exploit this opportunity at
home and how soon or how much later? Are we ready and steady to go or ROLL (it's the football season after all) ?
