What a phenomenal growth India’s sports industry has seen in the past decade. At almost 15 percent, the Indian sports industry is one of the fastest-growing in the world and this is considerably higher than the 5 percent growth the world sports industry has seen in the past five years.

India’s sports market grew from Rs 6,400 crore five years ago to more than Rs 9,140 crore pre-pandemic, which is a 42 percent CAGR jump in 3 years.

The pandemic hit all sectors and sports was no exception, it took a hard hit last year, and dropped by 35 percent to Rs 5,900 crore. But come 2021, and the industry is set to score big again.

Studies suggest that India’s sports market is set to reach Rs 8,800 crore with all the sporting action that’s lined up for the year.

A large chunk of this – over 60 percent is media spends alone. Nearly 14 percent of it is on-ground ads, 11 percent is team sponsorships, and the rest comes from endorsements and franchise fees.

What has really commercialised the business of cricketing is the Indian Premier League. In 2008, when the financial crisis had devastated the business world, the BCCI came up with the IPL game-plan to turn cricket into a profitable, money-minting machine.

The IPL itself accounts for nearly half of the entire Indian sports market in normal times and almost the entire revenue last year as of 2020. The IPL was valued at Rs 45,800 crore, which is near 2x jump from its value five years ago.

In this episode of ‘Mad about Markets’, Vinit Karnik, Head- ESP of GroupM, and Abhishek Ganguly, MD of PUMA India, discuss the business of sports.

On the growth of the sports industry, Karnik said, “The growth of sports as an industry has been phenomenal over the years and the whole growth story in India from a sports perspective actually began in in the year 2008 with IPL coming in our country. So from 2008 till about 2019 the Indian sports industry overall was growing at a healthy percentage of about 12 to 13 percent in some cases 14 percent.”

“Now, this is the overall percentage from a sports industry perspective. However, if you look at non-cricket sports, because of the low base in the non-cricket sports, those sports were actually growing at a very healthy 15 to 17 percent in some cases over the last five to seven years.”

On growth in the athletic wear category, Ganguly said, “We have seen tremendous growth in business. The recovery actually started in the last quarter of 2020, when we actually grew about 10 percent over the last year, which was pre-pandemic in 2019. This year, there has been tremendous growth actually, we are at this stage, doubling our business over 2020. So we are seeing enormous growth. I think it is also the category which is growing. Not just us, but the overall sportswear category is growing at a great pace at this stage.”

Watch accompanying video for more.

(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)

First Published: Sep 22, 2021, 05:54 PMIST