Hockey's fortunes have not followed an exponential curve, but hope is at hand. | |
| Ask a school-going kid about India's "national game", and the most likely answer you will get is cricket. Well, you can't blame the kids. Our national game, hockey, has not seen too many bright spots since the 1970s. |
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| The early Olympic wins are now forgotten, and Indian hockey in the speedier post-astroturf era has been unable to make the curve up the proverbial hockey stick towards exponential heights. |
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| Among the youth, whose preferences determine almost all sports spending, TV exposure to American ice hockey has only made field hockey look slow and drab. Yet, all is not lost. The past few years have seen signs of revival in terms of both team performance and corporate interest. |
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| "The state of hockey was pretty bad when we initiated PHL," recalls R C Venkatiesh, managing director, ESPN India, "But in the last two years it has improved by leaps and bounds." |
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| Three years back, ESPN teamed up with Leisure Sports Management to start the Premier Hockey League (PHL) and thus spark a revival. And talk of the "hockey curve" is back in business, too. |
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| What about sponsors? |
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| Sahara has been the official team sponsor of the national hockey team since 2003, while Adidas has a five-year deal with PHL. Says Andreas Gellner, managing director, Adidas India, "Adidas' emphasis has always been to promote sport at the grass root level and our association with the Premier Hockey League is a step in that direction." |
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| Western Union and ING Vysya are other PHL sponsors, and Airtel and Hutch might sign up for this year's season. |
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| Prize money is rising, too. In its first year, PHL's prize money was a mere Rs 71 lakh, a jackpot compared to the Aga Khan Cup's Rs 3 lakh and Nehru Cup's Rs 5 lakh, but this has doubled since. ESPN offers cash incentives, too, for players if they succeed at the hockey World Cup. |
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| As for broadcast coverage, while ESPN has the rights for domestic hockey, its rival broadcaster TEN Sports covers all the international hockey matches and has seen a few advertisers getting on board for that. |
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| But will the crowds watch? Hockey-sceptics feel that getting mass viewership depends crucially on the Indian team's performance, and that could prove a long haul. |
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| Also, in a fast globalising world, the lack of global play is a problem; internationally, it's a game that has only about Rs 20 crore riding on it annually, making it one of the smallest sports in the world. |
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| But then, team games need not be played by the whole world for them to be immensely popular in some parts of the world. American football rivets Americans. Cricket obsesses subcontinentals. |
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| But America has a fallback option in baseball. Maybe India could do with sports portfolio diversification too (soccer, hockey, whatever...). All said, mass enthusiasm for hockey can perhaps still be re-generated if the game gets that added dose of pizzazz, say, by glamourising astroturf play (nobody said it'll be cheap). |
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