Great hopes are pinned on World Series Hockey, a new league for city teams along the lines of cricket’s IPL. Will it work? Aabhas Sharma looks at the numbers and talks to the people.
On its website, the Nimbus-promoted World Series Hockey (WSH) states that its “focus is to reinvigorate hockey in India and to make it a ‘sport of choice’ for youngsters in the country”. Hockey, as fans and players would attest, is in a desperate need of a lift, and Nimbus says that WSH is just what the doctor ordered.
Still, there seems to be a sense of déjà vu with WSH: a sports broadcaster joins hands with the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) to come up with a glitzy version of our national sport. Get star players, launch a promotional blitzkrieg, make the sport a little bit more exciting and hope the passion will reignite. Back then it was the ESPN-promoted Premier Hockey League (PHL) which, after a bright start, soon faded into oblivion. Yannick Colaco, the COO of Nimbus Sport, however, is confident that WSH will deliver what it was formed to deliver, and that is a revival of interest in hockey. “Hockey enjoys immense popularity but has lacked a platform which can attract crowds in large numbers,” he says.
Nimbus is going all out with WSH and experts believe that it is spending about Rs 100 crore on the 35-day event that starts on December 17. It is providing IHF an annual fee of Rs 30 crore or a share of the league’s profits, whichever is more. The total prize money is around Rs 10 crore — similar to what IPL offers. Nimbus has signed on digital media agency Red Digital to use the social medium to promote WSH. It has also designed a special outreach programme for schools, where exhibition matches will be held and star players will interact with children. Bollywood star Suniel Shetty has been signed up by one of the franchisees as its “mentor”. Teams will be launching anthems, colourful merchandise for promotion.
Players from South Korea, Argentina and Australia have already come in and a coaching camp is set to get underway from December 10. Players from Pakistan are also expected to come next week. Closer to the event, Colaco says there will be advertising campaigns in the TV, print and radio mediums. But the real excitement, he thinks, will come once the event starts. “We are confident that fans will come to the stadiums and support their teams, as hockey still has passionate fans.” This is one reason why places like Bhopal, Chennai, Ranchi and Chandigarh have been chosen for franchises, as there is still a fan following for the sport here. The stadiums, too, have been renovated to give spectators a good experience.
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Manoj Chaudhry, the promoter of a corporate gifting company, has taken over the Pune franchise and is confident of returns on his investment. “Pune has a big hockey fan base and I am sure fans will turn up in large numbers,” he says. The franchisees are spending an estimated Rs 2-3 crore on promoting their teams in their city. There won’t be any music videos or celebrity names promoting Pune Strykers though, as Chaudhry believes that fans can see beyond all that. “We will give them a good team and make sure that they have a good experience supporting us,” he adds.
The Bangalore franchise, the Karnataka Lions, which has been acquired by Sporting Ace, a part of the Zenthum group, is planning to come out with a team anthem and use Dhanraj Pillay for the promotions. It will use television, print, radio and outdoor media to promote itself. A lot of the promotion will be on the local level as well, apart from the television ads.
Kingshuk Gupta, director of Sporting Ace, says he is not looking for short-term returns. But are there returns in hockey in the long term? “It definitely has the potential,” he says, “and in the next two years, this property can become big.” Event management company Wizcraft will adopt a communication mix of TV, print, OOH, and other BTL activations to promote its team, the Delhi Wizards. But will all of this work? “It is a long-term project and we believe it is the right time to invest in sports,” adds Sabbas Joseph, director, Wizcraft.
Pillay, the last superstar of Indian hockey, is making a comeback with the Bangalore franchise. Players like Arjun Halappa, Rehan Butt, and Brent Livermore from Australia will be representing various franchises. So there’s enough star power as far as players are concerned. The players will earn more in these two months than IHF pays them annually. Coaches, like V Bhaskaran, Jose Brasa and Rajindra Singh, have even coached the national team in their careers. Bhaskaran says that hockey has seen many false dawns, but he hopes WSH reverses the trend. “Hockey needs a shot in the arm desparately,” he says.
Whatever WSH might try to do, the dreaded comparison with PHL looms large. WSH has eight city-based teams: Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Punjab, Bhopal, Ranchi and Rourkela. Each team will have 25 registered players, of whom 18 can play. All the matches in WSH will be of 70 minutes, but instead of two halves the games will have four quarters of 17-and-a-half minutes each. The teams will play each other twice at home and away. PHL had a similar format.
Colaco doesn’t want to compare WSH with PHL, and says that once WSH starts, people will see how different it is. Back then no one had heard about the money-making machine called IPL, which merged sports and entertainment seamlessly and made money in the process. Business houses and celebrities all take more interest in sport now, and they look at it as an investment. “This is a great opportunity for us both in terms of business as well in creating a fan base for a sport which needs people backing it,” says Joseph.
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Five years ago Joseph, or a company of his stature, would not have invested in hockey. Experts and players feel that WSH will be different, and hope it will give hockey a much-needed push. “It seems like a viable commercial ecosystem that will benefit the players and all the stakeholders,” says Viren Rasquinha, a former Indian captain and now COO of Olympic Gold Quest. Rasquinha himself is making a comeback after having quit three years ago. He is with the Mumbai-based franchise.
Media buyers, however, are not very excited about WSH. They believe that, while there is interest in hockey, it can’t be sustained. “It is an endeavour which can work but it won’t draw too much of TV audience,” says a Mumbai-based media buyer. Nimbus is still in the process of getting sponsors and Colaco does not reveal any names. Media buyers think that the ad rates will be low, but that on-ground rates could be high.
Even before it has started, WSH has seen its fair share of controversies. Hockey India, the rebel hockey organisation, has refused to release players — six national players have withdrawn from the tournament. Colaco finds this a bit strange, and says that “not a single WSH player has communicated in person or via email to us about their non-availability. In fact, we have had repeated confirmation from all our players that they are extremely excited to be a part of this event.” The script of this story is pretty similar to that of PHL — then, too, there were Wizards and Lions and much hopeful talk about hockey making its great comeback.