Why are Indian corporations not supporting our sportspersons beyond cricket?

Just two big MNCs back a clutch of sportspersons from the country in a dedicated, structured manner. Where are the rest?

It was a moment of pure joy and jubilation. That historic gold won by a young lad from Haryana in one of the most unlikely of sports (according to Indians, that is)—the javelin throw. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics has been India’s best-ever show at the Olympic Games in terms of medals won. The country finished 48th in the final tally with a total of seven medals, including Neeraj Chopra’s historic win, also the first Indian track and field athlete to bag a gold. The medal haul also included two silvers (Mirabai Chanu for weightlifting and Ravi Dahiya for wrestling) along with four bronze medals (PV Sindhu for badminton, Lovlina Borgohain for boxing, Bajrang Punia for wrestling and the Indian men’s hockey team).

It’s significant that out of the seven-medal haul at Tokyo, Chopra and Punia are supported and represented by JSW Sports. While Chopra’s medal is owed to his talent and hard work, it’s a win that’s linked to his patrons, JSW Sports–the sports arm of the JSW Group–a $13 billion multinational conglomerate. Two years after the win, Chief Executive Officer of JSW Sports, Mustafa Ghouse is looking ahead. “I think we are just getting started. We want to produce many many more Neeraj Chopras and Bajrang Punias and Sakshi Maliks who will go on to win gold medals for India. It’s on the back of that we will see a bigger shift in the entire sports ecosystem,” he says.

Ghouse’s statement is not bravado. Since 2012, when JSW Sports was founded, it has established the Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS), India's first privately funded high-performance training centre for future Olympians, in Karnataka. They’ve also added teams to the Indian Premier League (IPL), the Pro-Kabaddi League and the Indian Super League to its portfolio. “While the Olympic programme is part of JSW’s CSR endeavour, JSW Sports is an independent entity, which is part of the larger JSW group. All the capital expenditure that was used to build the training institute was entirely funded by the JSW Group and the JSW Foundation. Now we have almost 25 more corporates who have associated with us, to help us build the programme,” shares Ghouse. It’s to JSW’s credit that they are not only present in the cricket maidans but in training athletes, boxers, wrestlers, judo practitioners and swimmers.

A huge market

In March this year, GroupM, the entertainment, e-sports and sports division of GroupM India released the sports sponsorship report for India 2021. The report titled Sporting Nation in The Making had estimates of the Indian sports industry surpassing ₹9,500 crore in 2021. The report accounts for sponsorship spends, player endorsements and media spends on sports properties. It’s a staggering figure.

Another report by the brokerage firm Anand Rathi Investment Banking released in June this year pegs the Indian sports sector as an industry that is likely to go up five times to reach a value of $100 billion by 2027 from $27 billion in 2020.

Reports are great for assessing the value and potential of industries but an important question to be asked is: who supports the Indian athlete? Where do champions like Dutee Chand, Hima Das and Rani Rampal–all athletes from India’s mofussil towns and hamlets–get equipment, training and medical advice from?

Traditional and new champions of sports stars

While the JSW Group has been pursuing sports excellence in a focused manner since 2012, the Tata Group’s patronage and support for Indian sportspersons and sporting events dates back to almost a century. Sir Dorabji Tata was the first president of the Indian Olympic Committee and active in shaping the development of sports in India. He also funded India’s participation in the Antwerp Olympics (1920) and the Paris Olympics (1924). In 1927, the Jamshedpur Athletic Club was established.

The group’s companies, especially Tata Steel and Tata Motors, have consistently nurtured professional sportspersons. Chanakya Chaudhary, Vice President, Corporate Services, Tata Steel, emphasises, “At Tata Steel, sports is a way of life. [We] believe there is massive growth potential in Indian sports, and our approach is focussed on developing a complete sports ecosystem, from grassroots to academy to professional sportspersons.” The company has helped shape some of India’s iconic sporting talents over the years. Some of their protégés include archery stars Jayanta Talukdar, Deepika Kumari, Komalika Bari, Ankita Bhakat; Dronacharya awardees Purnima Mahato and Dharmendra Tiwari; as well as Bachendri Pal, Sourav Ganguly, Pullela Gopichand and Ravi Shastri.

The Reliance Group, led by their foundation, has also stepped into the sports arena with football from 2016 onwards and a junior NBS programme for potential basketball champions which began in 2013.

The gaping vacuum

Siddarth Pandey, a broadcaster and hockey coach for the Mohan Bagan hockey team says, “The Indian capitalist space is sprawling with hundreds and thousands of corporations. Unfortunately the only ones we are talking about are the ones in the news–which is the tip of the iceberg. The truth is that the Indian elite are actually anti-sport. They don’t play sports and they don’t want their children to play sports, other than cricket. If you look at the second rung of corporates, like Byju’s, for example–it is a start-up in the educational space with probably crores in CSR funds, but is doing very little for Indian sports except sponsoring the Indian cricket team. Is that making any difference for the grassroot athlete who could really benefit from funding, infrastructure to become future champions?” He says Indian athletes pretty much always emerge from the rural districts and smaller towns and that is a population that needs great support.

Pandey also points out that traditionally the heavy lifting in Indian sports mentoring, training and sponsorships has been carried out by Indian public sector undertakings (PSUs), for example, BPCL, which will soon be privatised according to government mandate. “Everyone in the sports ecosystem is frankly quite worried [about the privatisation move] because no one knows what will happen to the athletes when another company takes over.” He laments about the situation where most Indian companies don’t have their own sports teams, pointing out that most desi parents prefer their child studies for a MBA rather than pursue a sport.

As a corporate entity, the Mahindra Group used to be an active supporter of sports but in recent times, they have closed down that avenue for hockey and kabaddi, choosing instead to concentrate on motor sports. “It’s a real pity that they have shifted their focus in this manner. They haven’t even renewed the naming rights agreement with the Mumbai Hockey Association stadium that used to proudly sport their name earlier by citing pandemic losses. Surely that couldn’t have cost more than a SUV that they sell?” asks a sports journalist who spoke to The Established and wished to stay anonymous.

Catching them young

Like Reliance, the JSW Group, too, wants to catch them young. “The Inspire Institute was set up because as an athlete growing up in India, with an understanding of the scenarios, we felt one of the most important phases in one’s sporting career is from the 12-13, or 14-18 age brackets when you start deciding your future. It’s also the time a lot of people fall by the wayside because they don’t get the right guidance, support or financial aid, and if they might get injured, they don't receive the right treatment. There are a host of problems that come in the way, even education, if you are pursuing a more conventional path. We wanted to address that issue,” emphasises Ghouse.

What the Tokyo Olympics highlighted is that Indian sportspersons, when supported and given the correct infrastructure, can throw that magical javelin far and hit a gold. It’s time for other corporations to step up to the task and train hundreds of Neeraj Chopras for that.

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