Making India a leading sporting nation

The sports industry is one of the most rapidly growing industries. Given its close association with other sectors, such as media, telecom, education, real estate and tourism, the multiplier effect of incentivising the sports sector is sizeable. More importantly, it makes a significant contribution to general health and well-being of a country—studies show that indulging in sports can reduce obesity, the prime cause for cardiovascular diseases, by 27 per cent.¹ Despite these benefits, only around 6 per cent² of India’s population participates in sports, which is much lower than around 20 per cent³ in countries like the US, Australia and as high as 60 per cent in Japan.

What is unique about India is that the popularity and recognition of one game, cricket, has been on the rise while other games are making only slow progress. As India is emerging as a potent force on the global stage, be it economically or geopolitically, we should aim to make a similar leap on the global medals tally through the holistic development of sports across multiple disciplines.

Essentially, this task should have two phases which can be classified into short term and long term. Short term measures include the following.

The issue of underutilisation of sports facilities is more prevalent in urban areas, and we need to address this on a priority basis. By building/modifying more multi-facility sports complexes—similar to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Delhi—or customising existing sports infrastructure (through a PPP model) to support a wide range of games, we can improve the utilisation of these facilities and ensure sufficient infrastructure availability for other sports.  

Corporate funding for the sports sector has not gained momentum, despite these activities being permitted as CSR spending. As Indian firms mostly prefer to deploy their CSR money through NGOs specialised in sports, there is a need to incentivise the formation of such NGOs across the country. Simultaneously, the private sector should increase their direct participation by owning sports teams, building sports facilities and sponsoring deals.

We should improve the transparency and independency of sports federations by bringing about an independent form of recruitment for top positions and bringing transparency both in the functioning of federations as well as policymaking. A well-functioning sports federation, largely free from the influence of external entities is better placed to attract private investment and foster of the respective sports. 

Spotting talents and honing them to become elite athletes is a vital task. To support this, the Centre can first analyse the inherent strengths of each state and map them with a range of games and then encourage these states to focus on games where they have an edge through broad guidelines. Talents can be further nurtured through high performance centres set up across India.

Given its enormous benefits to all stakeholders, digital is the way to go for the sports sector. With the help of digital solution, sports facility operators can gather better consumer intelligence and build targeted marketing strategies. Core and peripheral technologies like stadium booking, academy management, customer relationship management, ball tracking etc can also play a vital role in building sports.

The long-term phase is to have more people opt for sports as a career and stay on this path throughout the life cycle, and both the government and the private sector should be at the forefront of driving this shift.

Playing games boosts students’ mental health, physical fitness and nurture essential traits necessary to face real-life challenges. Sports has a huge potential to inculcate leadership building and team management skills and can act as a powerful tool to promote women’s empowerment by providing them with a platform to showcase their abilities. As a result, there is a strong reason for the government to make sports a major part of the curriculum and introduce mandatory hours for games. 

As parents can significantly influence students’ career choice, they should be made aware of the unique advantages that students with state or national level accreditation in sports enjoy such as reservations at higher educational institutes and preferences in government jobs. Separately, corporates should inculcate sports as a constructive means for wellness among employees.

Indian corporates, PE investments and entrepreneurs are actively participating in Indian Premier League (IPL), which ensures that these games receive consistent publicity. They should be encouraged to have a similar level of involvement in other games such as Badminton, Football, Tennis, Kabaddi and Volleyball by sponsoring leagues, owning teams and building sports facilities. Well run leagues are a structured way of inducing public and kids to sports.

To conclude, India is an inflection point in Sports with success in multiple disciplines other than Cricket and also investments pouring in from private sector and state governments. With the fast-paced GDP growth India is witnessing, Sports sector can also grow significantly to ensure wider people participation and also for high performance achievements like Olympics, Asian Games, World cups etc. The Asian games 2022 medals tally gave up hope in the right direction but performance at recent Olympics has initiated a relook at the whole system of Sports in India. Having a conducive environment and a well-functioning sports ecosystem is imperative for development of the nation in a holistic and healthy manner.

A version of this article was published in The Times of India on 15 August 2024. The same can be read here

^[1] Playing Sports Helps Teens Fight Fat, Medpage Today, 16 July 2012, accessed on 2 June 2023
^[2] Only 5.56% of Indian population is sports literate, The Bridge, accessed on 1 July 2023
^[3] Bureau of Labor Statistics and Statista