Indian Sports: The need to involve the fans

The period of modern sports started with the advent of the Modern Olympic Games in 1900. The advent of the Modern Olympics, along with the process of urbanisation in the West, made a radical change in the traditional leisure activities of the people, which included drinking and gambling. These habits were replaced by sporting activities, such as boxing, horse racing, etc. Gradual increase in participation in sports added a commercial value to it. Sports became an integral part of the social system of the West.

Television and print media played an important role in spreading this culture in all over the world by showing quality content on sports. Today, the survival of any discipline of sports depends on this culture or its popularity, and thus the challenge to the sports administrators and the managers is to offer high quality sporting experience to the fans and spectators, to create and sustain their interest. In India, despite a significant increase in the number of sports competitions, a gap exists between the demand of the fans and the services provided to them. The objective of this article is to analyse this gap.

The rapid growth of the middle class population in India and an increase in their disposable income provide an impetus for creating a recreational value for sports. Moreover, the advent of the Cable and Satellite Television, which reaches almost 450 million viewers in India, is another important factor in creating popularity of sports. Today, more than half a dozen channels show sports content in this country.

Despite this growth in sports in India, except a few sports and sporting events, the majority, so far, have failed to create a sustainable fan-base for them. The case in point is Indian football where, except a few clubs, most of them do not have any fan base, which is one of the reasons of their commercial crisis. It is, therefore, pertinent to understand what the fans want.

In brief, it can be said that the fans want the best quality services, starting from proper distribution of tickets, comfortable seating positions, better view of the match, proper scoreboard, giant screen, food and beverage, proper security, etc. They are ready to pay a price for these services. However, there is a mismatch in this demand and supply mechanism. Let us now focus on the gaps which are needed to be addressed:

- There is a lack of opportunity to the people of tier II and tier III cities to watch quality sports competitions live. Due to the rotational policy adopted by various sports bodies, matches are held in these cities only once in a year or twice, which gives them less opportunity to be involved with a sports.

- Most of the stadiums in India lack basic facilities like comfortable seating positions, proper supply of food and water, clean toilet, proper entry and exit, proper security, proper distribution of tickets, etc. which discourage them to come and watch matches in the stadiums.

- In many cases, hardly any marketing initiatives are taken by the administrators and managers to make people aware of the events which are held or will be held in future.

- People of India follow their national teams, but the regional sentiment, except in a few cases, is yet to emerge. The matches of IPL or between East Bengal and Mohun Bagan certainly draw passionate crowds, but in most of the cases, the regional matches are held in empty stadiums.

The following measures may be adopted to solve these issues:

Improving existing facilities of sports

i) To upgrade the existing conditions of the stadiums and to provide basic amenities

ii) Improving local transport system for proper accessibility to the stadium

iii) Making arrangements for providing food and water at an affordable price

iv) Create spectators’ stands at the local college and university level competitions

Creating sports culture at the local level

i) Organising more number of sports events at the local and district levels

ii) Promote sports at the local level

iii) Create and promote regional sentiment in sports

iv) Make sporting activities an integral part of the educational system to provide participation opportunities

Producing sports icons

- Producing sports icons in various disciplines of sports to enhance the popularity of the game. The rise of icons like Saina Nehwal, Sushil Kumar, Vijendra Kumar, Sania Mirza played an instrumental role in popularising their respective disciplines of sports. Thus, comprehensive policies should be made to produce more sporting icons for increasing the popularity of sports.

These measures will surely help the sports managers and the administrators to create and sustain a fan base which is an essential factor for the survival of sports in today’s competitive world. We may hope to see a proactive role played by the major stakeholders of sports of India to revive the popularity of most of the disciplines of sports, specially the Olympic disciplines.