Recognising sports as an industry key to sports development

KPMG under the aegis of CII today released a report titled 'Business of Sports - shaping a successful innings for the Indian Sports Industry', which identifies key issues in the sports ecosystem and explores measures to develop a private-investment led sporting scenario in the country.
The report called for collaborative efforts of both the Government and private sector towards strengthening the sports ecosystem.
Ajit M Sharan, Secretary, Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports released the CII-KPMG report at CII's National conference on Sports here today.
Sportspersons -- Ronjan Sodhi (Shooting Double Trap), Manavjit Singh Sandhu (Shooting Trap), Shagun Chowdhary (Shooting Trap), Gaurav Natekar (Tennis) and Mustafa Ghouse (Tennis), Manjusha Kanwar (Badminton), Amit Kumar Dahiya (Wrestling), Renedy Singh (Football), Jubin Kumar (Table Tennis), Vishakha Vijay (Table Tennis), Jagdeep Singh (Kabaddi) -- were also felicitated at the event.

Atul Singh, Chairman, CII National Committee on Sports and Group President (Asia), The Coca Cola Company, highlighted industry's role of "going beyond sponsorships and CSR activity and the need for a policy shift to recognise sports as an industry".
"This would help actualise the India@75 vision for broad-basing sports in India, and promote excellence in sports, by promoting infrastructure development, providing technical support for athletes, as well as grooming talented sportspersons," he said.

During the conference, some key issues like lack of sports culture in India, limited funding avenues in sports, lack of transparency, etc were identified across various segments of the ecosystem.

And subsequently a set of recommendations have been suggested. The recommendations include the need for nationwide campaign to raise awareness on sports, implementation of a uniform sports policy across all states, active regional/local media supporting the cause of developing sports in India.
Other recommendations were provision of industry status to sports governance, strict implementation of the Sports Bill 2013.