Does football suffer because of cricket?

Is cricket’s overwhelming sway responsible for impeding football in India?

Abhik Chatterjee: Cricket is the primary sport in India. There is a huge appetite for it. However, I would say that football is a second favourite. I feel cricket has heroes, which is why people consume it more. There are so many people who aspire to get into the sport because India is able to perform at the highest level.

Football has many fans who consume the Premier League, La Liga, World Cup, Champions League, etc. But I feel that for it to explode, India needs to do well on the international stage. If we have players going and play outside India, that is when aspirations will go up and chatter around the sport will increase. The ISL obviously has played its part in giving the sport more eyeballs and in making clubs more professional. But there are improvements to be made. We need to take a few quantum jumps before we are able to compete with at least the top leagues in Asia.

Yannick Colaco: I do agree that football is the clear number 2 sport in India. Research shows there are close to 305 million football fans in the country now. When we think about sports as an opportunity, I don’t think we can say cricket is so dominant that there is no space for other sports. I mean, just the fact that there are 305 million football fans is proof of that — that is more than the population of some countries in the world. The opportunity for football to grow in this country is immense. We are just scratching the surface.

The Indian cricket team is among the best in the world right now. But the Indian football team continues to plummet in FIFA rankings. How big a factor is the performance of the respective teams?

Yannick Colaco: The performance of the Indian team is extremely important. I think that essentially just creates better sentiment. Anything that can create positivity around a sport is a good thing. But I don’t think it is the only thing. Even in cricket, if you look back some years, India was not consistently winning global tournaments, but cricket was still an extremely popular sport. Building the fandom that has already been developed around football and recounting the stories of footballers are essentially how we can actually move beyond performance of the Indian team.

Abhik Chatterjee: There are multiple factors. There needs to be a concentrated effort across the board. All the stakeholders, whether it is the clubs, federation, or broadcaster, need to come together. There is a way to convey why football is what it is, and why people love the sport. For all of this to happen, there are foundations to be put in place right at the bottom and then developed gradually all the way up to the top. It needs to be a systemic change, and it needs to also be something that is sustainable in the long term.

When the ISL, which was modelled along the lines of the Indian Premier League in cricket, began in 2014, there was a lot of optimism. People believed that this was a new dawn for Indian football. Do you feel that opportunity has been squandered?

Yannick Colaco: People are attracted towards the concept of a silver bullet. They think one move is suddenly going to change everything in a consumer product. It does not work that way. When the ISL was set up, it was a very positive move. The ISL has close to 150 million fans across the country. I think there is still optimism around the game of football.

Abhik Chatterjee: Nothing is wasted. The ISL has paved the way for people to start watching a professionally marketed domestic football league that from the beginning featured players from around the world. As an administrator, I have seen change. We have had some top foreign coaches come into the league over the last decade. Indian coaches have obviously benefited from working with them. They have learned how to upgrade themselves. Some of them have gone on to become head coaches in their own right. This is just a small example of how the ISL has contributed to the Indian football ecosystem. There are many positives. We have to pause for a moment and be grateful for those. But there are also aspects that we can improve on as we go forward.

When the ISL media rights were sold earlier this month, there were comparisons with the valuation of the IPL media rights. Joy Bhattacharjya said if India is to take itself seriously as a sporting nation, the bizarrely skewed ratio has to come down. What are your thoughts?

Yannick Colaco: In today’s social media world, putting out numbers without context has become a norm. The situation is a lot more complex. The media rights value is definitely not a reflection of the state of a sport in our country. You should be looking at following, viewership, attendance, and much more to judge a sport. The focus of everyone in the football ecosystem should not be about how much cricket makes. Monetisation will happen. But if you focus only on that, then you won’t concentrate on the most important aspect of football, which is essentially how our fan base is growing.

In terms of governance, cricket seems to largely have its house in order. In football, the administration has been riddled with controversies. How detrimental has that been?

Abhik Chatterjee: There are multiple issues that Indian football has gone through in the past year. It would be foolish to deny that. It is out in the open. But there is an opportunity to move in a new direction. The clubs have come together, which is refreshing to see. I speak more with my colleagues than I ever have in the last 14 years. Everybody has taken joint ownership of the product. Everybody is hands-on in taking decisions across the board, whether it comes to governance, broadcast, marketing, or sponsorship. That approach has stemmed from the challenges faced over the past few months.

Cricket has also had issues when it comes to administration, but through India doing well at the international stage and with strong leadership, it has settled into what it is today. The ISL is still in a growing phase, but everybody is committed to moving forward and working together to solve issues.

How optimistic are you of India widening its sporting footprint, and cricket and football thriving together? Or will football always be a distant number 2 sport?

Yannick Colaco: The sporting footprint is already widening in terms of participation. There is no one-year, two-year solution. We need to think of this and plan for the next five or 10 years. You keep building milestones in that space. But I don’t think anyone should look at football suddenly becoming 10 times its size in a year or two years. You have to build this patiently, in the right way.

Abhik Chatterjee: Football has to be looked at in a singular manner, in its own ecosystem, and within its own set of challenges. If you do want to compare, you should compare India to neighbouring countries in the Asian Football Confederation that we have to catch up with or match. That is a more valid comparison. You look at the likes of Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong. Those are more interesting discussions that need to happen.

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