Football Sets To Rock Bolywood
Ruskin Ramsundar - Publisher/Creative Director

The biggest sporting contest of the next few years may not be Chelsea v Manchester United, the Yankees v the Sox, or Australia and India continuing their titanic cricket battle - it could pit one bull, the Premier League against another. As far-fetched as it may seem, the English Premier League's proposal to have its clubs each play one match a season abroad could spark the toughest, and perhaps only, competition for cricket's newest avatar in India, the Indian Premier League.

Cricket being so deeply entrenched in the national ethos may make this thought wishful thinking, not to mention overcoming a lot of ifs, buts and coulds, and whatever happens is plainly several years down the line. But if the men who run Indian cricket don't play their cards right they run the risk of scoring an own goal. For too long, the Indian cricket board has ignored the need to broad-base its income streams, focusing on maximizing revenues from television rights while overlooking the need for a more holistic view of the game. Blindingly, they do not seem to realize that the relatively tiny constituency of eyeballs that brings in the TV money is also glued to European football, especially the English Premiership. The young, upwardly mobile Indians flocking to the IPL grounds, sitting in the IPL cafes in their IPL jerseys, are the same ones who could just as well spend their money on football.

It's no secret that India is emerging as a lucrative sporting venue. Recently, the first European Tour golf tournament was played in India in front of sell-out crowds. Formula One car racing is taking off at death-defying high speed and tennis is being encouraged in a racquet-booming way, (the Williams sisters recently visited some high-profile tennis clubs). And the growing power of the Indian economy and the sheer numbers of the audiences involved means that, eventually, all top sporting events will have some connection here.

But it is football, the world's most popular sport, the one where the biggest bucks can be found, that is making a serious play for the Indian market. Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s top gun and his Asian football associates as well as the chief executives of the Barclays Premier League and Chelsea football club; and the men who run Manchester United's youth programmes have recently visited India. And trust me, it was definitely not for the exotic curry. Meanwhile Laxmi Mittal, the world's richest Indian (who has not, by the way, bought an IPL franchise) has invested in the English soccer team, Queen's Park Rangers. And Sunil Mittal (no relation), billionaire owner of the Airtel telecom brand, has forked out at least $25 million, to the All-India Football Federation for development work.

The Premiership's plan which - again, subject to the ifs and buts - could be played outside of England from 2011, a payback of sorts for the $1.2 billion it earned in overseas sale of TV rights for 2007-10, is not targeted specifically at India, of course; south-east Asia, Australia, the Gulf states, Africa and South America are all more viable destinations in the first few years of the plan. But India, with its happy confluence of money, masses and market economy, is the prized destination. As Nick Massey, managing director of the global sports marketers Octagon, said, "that among the many changes in sport over the next ten years will be attempts by English football clubs to 'break into' the Indian market, starting with pre-season tours to the subcontinent."

While addressing India's top businessmen at a meeting organized by the progressive Confederation of Indian Industry, Blatter stated that India is the sleeping giant of world football. "We can offer you the platform and it's up to you to decide what you make of the fans", he said. "Football offers you an opportunity not only to be identified locally, regionally and nationally - football can bring India to the knowledge of the world."

In fact, corporate India has been at work on a similar vision for some time now. In addition to Zee, the group behind the Indian Cricket League (ICL), who bought telecast rights for India's national football league for $70 million in a ten-year deal effective 2005, Vijay Mallya's football connections bought over Kolkata's two traditional rival clubs, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, a decade ago. And 'The Durand Cup', the oldest football tournament outside Britain, inked sponsorship from Osian's, the Mumbai-based art dealership and auction house, and is beamed on one of the news channels - often the specialised business channel - of NDTV, India's most respected news programming television network.
India has always had a football (sub)culture. In Kolkata, where the game took root in the 19th century, the city is sharply divided during every World Cup match between Brazil and Argentina

Now that culture is going upmarket. Live broadcast of English/European football began in India in the mid-1990s. Add that to the the cult film Bend it like Beckham, and soon football became sexy. Years ago, Sachin Tendulkar - yes, you read right - did a promo, clad in a Chelsea jersey. Official football merchandise is now available in the bigger cities, and when a senior official of IMG, the sports marketing and management firm, attending Manchester United's camp for kids in Goa said he saw "5000 kids wearing United shirts and all of them pirated", he was only highlighting the potential market.

Which brings us back to the eyeballs. Let it be known that, just as the Indian viewer gets to watch top-class live cricket action from around the world, he can watch the best live European football - the English Premier League, the Spanish La Liga, the Italian Primera Liga, the Dutch, German, French and Scottish leagues, and the UEFA Champions League - at no extra cost.

Is anyone really watching all that, though? The respected media tracking agency Agencyfaqs says football viewership has been growing continuously in India. In 2006, it says, the English Premier League reached a hugemongous 42.8 million viewers in India, almost 50 per cent of the cable TV-wired homes. And its growing. The target audience is mostly male, in the age group 15-plus, in the top four socio-economic categories. That is the exact identikit of your potential Twenty20 fan.

Is India sufficiently big for more than one sport to prosper? Indeed, it is. It is also nobody's case that football will supplant cricket overnight, if at all. What could happen, though, is that football could improve at several levels. The local club culture - it already exists, with far more loyalty than the Mumbai or Kolkata IPL teams can hope for - could grow, as easier access to the world's best footballers has a knock-on effect. At the same time-and here's the clincher-cricket will be losing its biggest-ever brandname, Sachin Tendulkar.

Ultimately, India's retail economy is booming because it is aspirational; can there be anything more aspirational for the Indian fan than a slice of the world's biggest sport?