Beyond cricket

The idea was to get into a sport that had a low cost of entry That is how Star Sports zeroed in on kabaddi It is played all over the country with about 3000 clubs And it needs no gear But it took a year in planning because ldquonobody could produce it So we had to bring in people who had done contact sports knew the camera work needed train the commentatorsrdquo says Sanjay Gupta COO Star India The result has been staggering mdash Star Sports Pro Kabaddi got roughly half the average viewership that the Indian Premier League Indiarsquos biggest sporting event got earlier this year on SonyWanting more Star Sports ProKabaddi or FIFA 2014 are simple reminders that there are audiences and markets that want something beyond cricket The big broadcasters are now putting serious money into them Will the ad money followStar Sports ProKabaddi League however did not make money And it probably wonrsquot for at least another three years say sources at Star Nevertheless the broadcaster is going ahead with its investment in the Hero Indian Super League a football seriesSony which owns the rights to the IPL is spending pots of money on football wrestling and basketball When it got the US National Basketball Associationrsquos rights three years ago the feeling was that basketball may not be very popular in India But viewership has risen from 14 million to 50 million over the last two years The total viewership for basketball now stands at 89 million people NP Singh CEO MultiScreen Media Sony says that research done a couple of years ago showed clearly that young people were following many other sports online Sony then zeroed in on a few of them to drive viewership to its sports channels Ten Sports uses a lot of wrestling football and other sports to do the sameIn a country which doesnrsquot have a sports culture and where 90 per cent of the viewership and money goes to cricket this is perhaps one of the most heartening trends on television The entry of big broadcasters into a sport invariably pushes the ecosystem towards better facilities training and production qualityFor those of you cribbing about the quality of football on the ISL remember you are used to international football which is very popular in India At last count the sport had an average viewership of 215 million The ISL perhaps signifies the first few steps to get domestic football going IMGReliance which owns ISL has a clause that team owners have to invest a percentage of revenues into improving facilities What ISL has done in its year one is make eight quality football grounds available to playersUnless a game develops on home ground and is played by many in the audience like cricket the chances of its managing to make the transition from being a viewership magnet to being a revenue earner are lower The investment into football locally and its popularity should eventually make it a cricketsized sport in India too You can see some evidence of that in the number of neighbourhood clubs and coaching facilities now available for footballSimilarly Starrsquos interest in kabaddi or Sonys in basketball will mean the rise and prosperity of several hundred clubs across the country What they are doing is helping expand the market mdash and in the process getting a share of a rising viewership and hopefully advertisingAnd that brings me to the tricky part Can other sports make the leap from something you see because it is a good sport to something that you play or encourage your kid to play Or something that you pay to watch like cricketK Satyanarayana senior vice president at R K Swamy Media Group reckons that if a sport has glamour like cricket mdash it could happen In cricket you could become a star overnight That is because big money chases it But till big money starts chasing kabaddi or football they will not become glamorous Chicken and egg that oneThe writer is a media specialist and author Follow her on twitter at httptwittercomvanitakohlik