Indian football needs corporate support like never before as the popularity of the sport is growing thanks to the expanding fan base of European clubs
It’s 12.30 am on a Tuesday. Thirty people dressed in red football jerseys are cheering ‘their’ team on. The place is Manchester United café in Gurgaon and the team these fans are supporting is, but of course, Manchester United.
Cut to another set of 30 fans. They too are supporting their team, but they are not wearing football jerseys and they have not assembled in a 100-seater café but in a stadium with a capacity of 10,000. The team they’re backing is an Indian club and not a European one.
It’s this conundrum that football in India faces today. The sport is gaining popularity — and collecting a passionate bunch of fans in the process — but they are not fans of Indian football clubs.
Two weeks ago, Indian poultry company Venky’s bought Blackburn Rovers, a club in the English Premier League, for £46 million. The takeover raised many questions, the most important one being, will an Indian company be willing to fork out a similar sum, or even a fraction, for an Indian club?
Larsing Ming, vice president of Lajong Football Club in Shillong, Meghalaya laughs at the thought of it — “Corporate support is bare minimum and clubs often struggle to make ends meet.” Ming speaks from experience. Lajong FC, a small club which made it into the Indian National League three years ago, struggled to keep afloat. “Thanks to the passion of fans and some support from corporates, we managed,” he says.
Earlier this year, auto giant Mahindra & Mahindra disbanded its 48-year-old club Mahindra United. It didn’t come as a surprise to many. Running a football club in India requires about Rs 8-10 crore annually. This includes the wages of players and management, infrastructure and operational costs. Most clubs run on a shoestring budget. And this is after corporate support in some form or the other. “Companies treat football clubs as just another form of corporate social responsibility and not a serious business proposition,” says a former manager of a top Indian club.
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“Why should they?” asks Nirvan Shah, who runs the Premier Indian Football Academy in Mumbai. “There needs to be a total overhaul at all levels if Indian football clubs want a better future,” he says. And that has to start — to use the old cliché — at the grassroots. Shah finds encouraging signs at the under-15 level. Thanks to the popularity of clubs like Chelsea, Real Madrid, Liverpool, youngsters have greater exposure and want to play football. “Their dream club might not be a Mumbai FC but they realise that that could be the stepping stone,” he explains.
Corporate Soccer Responsibility
United Breweries sponsors the two giants of Indian football — East Bengal and Mohun Bagan. The Essel Group promotes Mumbai FC while the Ashok Piramal Group owns Pune FC. Bharti had planned to invest a significant sum in Indian football but put the project “on hold” in 2009. JCT Group, too, was reported to be mulling its financial returns on its club JCT earlier this year.
Ben Wells, head of marketing, Chelsea Football Club, believes there are several challenges to overcome — from stadiums and training facilities to lack of coaches, diet and nutrition, and the usual political challenges any sport faces.
Arunava Chaudhry, editor of popular football website Indianfootball.com feels that clubs lack knowledge and expertise on a number of fronts. “The administration needs to be professionalised at the national level by the All India Football Federation and also at the state- and club-levels,” adds Chaudhary.
A three-pronged plan will help clubs attract investments, he believes. These include building their own infrastructure, focusing on developing young players and employing professional staff to run the clubs. Once that happens, the next step is to enhance their fan base, and then look to create new revenue streams, which are absent now.
Teaming up
Chaudhary is in favour of a public-private partnership because neither the government nor the private players are willing to do much on their own. “We need to show a healthy return on investment,” says Ming of Lajong FC. Brands are willing to invest if they see good returns as they do in sports like golf or tennis. Most top European clubs have visited India in the past couple of years and, undoubtedly, most have looked at the attractive demographics and perceived an opportunity.
In 2008, Bayern Munich announced its plans to launch a football academy in West Bengal; Liverpool also had similar plans in Pune; Chelsea is scouting for partners to come to India; and Manchester United has opened cafes in the metros and is conducting trail programmes in schools.
There is no doubt that European expertise will have an impact on Indian football but only those clubs who take the time to understand India’s long-term requirements will have a positive effect. “We believe that a national vision for football is required along with the involvement of clubs that have a long-term development agenda,” says Wells. Indian football will not benefit in the long-term from activities that only suit the commercial agenda of the club involved.
Perhaps the solution lies in getting the European and local clubs to work together. But those clubs also want a return on the investment they will make in the country. But that needs to be backed up by corporates, government and the AIFF.
Wells is worried that “there’s a real risk of the situation getting confused further, unless there is a coordinated approach”. “You have get your house in order first,” says Shah.
