FIH eyes new technology to attract youngsters

With an aim to tap new followers, the International Hockey Federation (FIH) has launched 'The Hockey Revolution' programme, a 10-year strategy which will witness the world body utilising technology to promote the game among the youngsters and new market.
The Hockey Revolution programme launched at the end of last year will set a direction for FIH until 2024, the centenary year of the world body.
"We have started is what is called 'Hockey Revolution' in our Congress last year. Revolution means we need to do changes and these changes have to be implemented as soon as possible. Now in the world of sports it is very important to be proactive. If you are sleeping you are losing on opportunities," FIH president Leandro Negre told a select group of journalist covering the Hockey World League (HWL) Finals at the Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Stadium here.

"We need to generate million of followers in the world through communications and social media. We need a very exciting and nice product and in the last few years we have started to work on that front and the big example of that is the Hockey World League which gives opportunities to everybody. We need to spread hockey in 160 countries in the world and not just the top six countries.
"To achieve that we introduced the Hockey World League and the second is the Hockey Five and this is a very interesting tool to promote hockey. And that is the way we think youth will get engaged to hockey," he said.

Even though Negre said that smart phones are the future of communication, interestingly, the FIH is yet to develop its application. However, the world body said that they are in the process of developing one soon.
"But you also need something else and that is a 10-year strategy for hockey. You need to predict what will happen in the next 10 years and for that we need to start from now. One idea which we have is to make the Hockey World League a real league which means not round system but home and away system. But we are studying its feasibility," he said.