As India enters a critical phase of its footballing life, there are perhaps more questions than answers. Questions are being raised about the health of the game in the country, especially after teams such as JCT and Mahindra shut shop. Non-telecast of this year’s league was another huge setback for football in India. Described by Sepp Blatter as a sleeping giant, India, in the eyes of many, is yet to awaken from its slumber. After repeated attempts by AFC at nurturing the game in the country and giving it all the special attention, much more than what the Confederation does in other developing countries, India still hasn’t taken the final leap – the leap to professionalism. But why are we taking so long? Why isn’t the sport growing in this country when we have a huge viewership of football in India? Why do we get fans at Ambedkar sporting EPL jerseys rather than our own club jerseys? Why can’t a country of one billion take its team to the World Cup? Worse still, why did a team of one billion qualify for the Asia Cup after a gap of 24 years?
The majority of the fingers have been pointing towards the AIFF and the lack of foresight by the premier governing agency of football in India.
The blame for the sorry state of affairs of football in India can be squarely put on three major issues:
Lack of infrastructure
Come to think of it, a country with an area of 3,287,263 square kilometers has just one FIFA approved stadium in Chennai, and probably 20-odd other football stadiums across the country. To attract sizeable crowd, good stadiums is the need of the hour. The recent World Cup qualifier at the Ambedkar stadium in New Delhi exposed us in terms of infrastructure. It was appalling to see a World Cup qualifier played on a water logged pitch with absolutely no drainage facilities. We currently have just two artificial turfs for football in this country- one at Salt Lake and the other at Chowgule in Margao, Goa. Thanks to FIFA’s “Win India with India” programme, we got another artificial turf at Bangalore and we will be getting four more – one at Cooperage in Bombay, two in Goa and one in Shillong. We need more such infrastructure in this country and better grass turfs that will attract kids to come and play football.
One of the major reasons why cricket is a craze across the country is because every state in India probably has at least one, if not two, good stadiums and plenty other grounds that attract kids to the game. It is ironic though that the government builds cricket stadiums at the drop of a hat but the same cannot be said about football. Thanks to the BCCI’s financial muscle, even a far off place like Dharamsala boasts of an IPL venue but probably doesn’t even have a football ground. If India is to improve as a footballing nation we need to drastically improve our infrastructure. With the club licensing criteria being enforced by the AIFF, it will be mandatory for clubs to have their own stadium in the recent future. But how many of our clubs have the financial power to spend money on building a stadium? Transtadia, a premier sports infrastructure building company, revealed that building a simple 15,000-20,000 capacity stadium will cost around 15-20 crores. Something that clubs in India will find it difficult to manage unless they get some sort of assistance from the government? If India were to host the World Cup, how many stadiums do we have of international standard? Probably none at the moment that could host a game of such magnitude. When the Salt Lake stadium was being cleared up for the Argentina v Venezuela game scheduled for September 2nd, there were snakes in the stadium and bushes and shrubs growing inside – something that speaks about the state of football infrastructure that we have in this country.
Marketing and Branding
There’s just one match that crowds throng for in India – the Kolkata Derby. It is indeed unfortunate that a country that has one of the highest viewership /TRP’s during the football World Cup, that has a fairly huge interest in the EPL/La Liga and a country that has one billion people cannot get its stadiums even half full for its domestic league. That says it all. Poor branding and marketing has hit the I-League and football in this country. When Samir Thapar disbanded JCT, he said that lack of television coverage of this year’s league was the major factor for him deciding to close down the team. Samir said that with lack of coverage and very few eyeballs, it was difficult to convince the company’s shareholders that it was worth investing in this team. Come to think of it, Samir Thapar may be indeed right.
Currently there are no financial rewards or returns for football in India. A team that wins the League gets merely 50 lakhs – the salary of a single player nowadays. Winning each game gets you Rs. 35,000. In addition, the AIFF provides a subsidy of Rs. 1,200 per player and official if the team has traveled outside the state. Shrinivas Dempo once said that in India, football is run by generous donors and benefactors, not by businessmen. He is probably right. Almost all leading clubs regularly suffer losses to the tune of 6-7 crore each year. Ticket sales in Kolkata and Shillong maybe sizeable, but in the rest of the country including Goa, teams hardly get any revenue on ticket sales. As per the pattern followed last year, a majority of the revenue earned in ticket sales goes to the Local Organising Committee or the State Association as they are the organizers. That leaves just 30% of the revenue to the home clubs. From this year onward, the responsibility of organizing the games will be on the home team and they will take home the entire share of ticket sales, but a big chunk of that will go on organizing the game. For Goan clubs, it will probably mean added financial burden because the Sports Authority of Goa (SAG), owners of the Nehru Stadium, would be entitled to 20% of the revenue – which means all the organizing of the game would have to be done with the remaining 80% of the gate collection. A difficult task considering last year’s average gate collection in Goa was a mere 30,000-40,000 rupees. When Dempo had to shift their AFC Cup matches to Pune this year, they paid a whopping 11 lacs to organize each game.
With all such expenditure incurred, it makes marketing and branding critical in order for a club to withstand the financial pressure. It would help if there is TV coverage so that a percentage of the TV revenue can trickle down to the clubs. For that to happen, the AIFF needs to find a broadcaster as soon as possible. Talk’s were on with Sony and even ESPNSTAR for the telecast of this years League but nothing has been revealed so far. Sunando Dhar, I-League CEO, has assured that this years League will be televised but till now nothing concrete has happened and we are just two months away from the start of the League. No doubt the highlight of last year was the deal with IMG-Reliance but after that nothing worthwhile has happened. If there is no telecast of this year’s League, it would mean disaster for Indian football.
Another major issue troubling football in India is the lack of popularity for the domestic league. Yes a major blame for this should be put on the lack of television coverage, but the clubs as such are not doing themselves any favours. EPL and European football is hugely popular in India, which means there is football viewership and football is quite popular in this country, but the same cannot be said about the domestic league. It may be the case of top quality European football eating into the domestic league. Crowds would rather watch Messi or Ronaldo play rather than Jeje Lalpekhlua or Climax Lawrence, which is fair enough. But here’s another angle to this story. Why do games in the Korean League (K-League) or the Japan League (J-League) get a capacity crowd on weekends even when Park Ji Sung is starting for Manchester United?
It is obvious that crowds in Korea throng the stadium to watch their local heroes rather than watching Park and Rooney play for Manchester United. Which means there is something that those clubs are doing that we are not. It makes sense to say that Korea after hosting the World Cup has developed a football culture. Which again comes to the whole issue of good infrastructure that was built for the World Cup, popularity, branding and marketing. Why can’t we do the same? Why not have at least one world class stadium in each I-League venue where people will throng to get their money’s worth even if there is a Manchester United-Arsenal game going on at the same time? It’s about how the clubs deliver their product to the masses and certainly this is not happening in India. Brand building is non-existent in India.
Premiership clubs such as Manchester United through the Manchester United Premier Cup, Arsenal through the Tata Tea Jaago Re tournament, Bayern Munich through the Bajaj Allianz Talent Hunt and recently Blackburn Rovers are beginning to tap the enourmous market that India has. But where these foreign clubs have succeeded, we have failed. Our Indian clubs have failed to penetrate inspite of being based here. How many of our clubs have Fan Development Programmes or Community based services that build the brand image of the club? I would say, just a handful.
Apart from the Kolkata clubs and the clubs in the North East, none of the the clubs can boast of a huge fan following and none of the other clubs can attract huge crowds. Obviously there is something wrong, as despite being based in their own state, the clubs are unable to attract their own people to the stadium. Football in the north east is definitely a craze. At the Ambedkar stadium for the India-UAE game, there was a huge presence in the crowd from North East which speaks volumes about the popularity of football there. It’s no surprise that Shillong Lajong had the highest gate collection during the 2009-10 I-League and their games used to be sold out a week before kick-off. Considering this, why haven’t clubs in India organized tours there and tried to cash in on the enormous market potential that the North East has to offer? Call it a lack of vision or no interest in marketing and branding, and popularizing your product. How many of our clubs in India even have websites that would reach out to fans globally?
Just to put things in perspective, here’s something on the Korean League (K-League) –
Baseball is the number one sport in South Korea and people rarely talk about football other than the national team, even though they have hosted the World Cup and even though Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, Pohang Steelers and Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma have all won the coveted AFC Champions League.
Majority of the Korean public follows its baseball teams that are bankrolled by corporate giants like LG and Samsung but statistics showed that K-League games have astonishingly high attendance figures.
According to K-League official site, 193,959 people made their presence felt in the 8 stadiums around South Korea on the opening weekend thanks to improved marketing strategies, enhanced fixture scheduling and a good performance from the Korean National side in Asian Cup, but that was not it. For the second round, 179,938 people had visited the eight games. What stood out was that those who were leading this trend were not the big clubs – Suwon Bluewings, Jeonbuk Hyundai, FC Seoul. They were the likes of Daejeon Citizens, Gyeongnam FC, Sangju Phoenix and Daegu FC, all of who experienced a packed house. And although the attendances shrunk after the start of the baseball league, crowds still came to watch matches. That says it all. Even in a country dominated by baseball, crowds still came to watch football.
To be Continued…