Volleyball rebranded: Serving aces with NBA-inspired model

In 2020, Ashwal Rai, stuck at home, tried not to think about a future where he couldn’t play volleyball. Despite the fact that Rai had recently secured employment in the Railways under the sports quota, it was a time of deep despair. The thought of not being able to fulfil his sporting ambitions gnawed at him. “In India, we just have state tournaments, inter-department matches, and the Senior Nationals,” Rai says. “There’re very few avenues for us to show our skills and improve our game… The league in 2019 was great, but then the gap was bad.”  

Rai is talking about the first season of the Pro Volleyball League — six franchises playing a two-legged tournament across two cities over a month. The event put a small-town playground sport back into mainstream TV consciousness and laid the bedrock for a small measure of success later in the year as India won gold in the event at the South Asian Games.

But not long after the season concluded — when pats on backs were perhaps in order — the Volleyball Federation of India (VFI) got into conflict with Baseline Ventures (the organisers of the league), accusing them of misapp­ropriating funds and not paying dues. The federation refused to release dates for the second season and after a prolonged public dispute, Baseline took them to court for the “wrongful termination” of the 10-year contract.

Baseline won the case and in November 2020, Justice K Kannan (retd), the Madras high court-appointed arbitrator, awarded it Rs 4 crore plus interest as damages (and legal fees). All of this makes the brief flash of Pro Volleyball League a wholly Indian sport story — a private entity enters a sport, clashes heads with the federation, resolves the dispute in court before moving on. The sport is again forgotten.

Except it wasn’t. Rather than walk away, team owners and Baseline broke free of the federation to launch their own “rebel alliance”. Rebranded, recharged and rechristened (now called the RuPay Prime Volleyball League — PVL), it returned in the first week of February this year (the finals are on the 27th). Rai is a main­stay for the Kolkata Thunder­bolts and one of the standout performers for the season.

The PVL’s rebranded avatar is also a fresh start for Indian sport. Their model, where franchise owners (there are seven teams in all) along with Baseline Ventures own a stake in the league itself — akin to that followed by the NBA and the English Premier League — paves a new way ahead.

The advantages of this model are fairly clear. With everyone equally invested tow­ards profit-making (a defi­nite motive if not the over­riding one), acco­u­ntability and trans­parency are necessary. Bud­gets are drawn centrally (by Base­line) but approved and tweak­ed by all. Calicut Heroes’ tall ren­owned middle blocker, the American Olympian David Lee says it best: “Because these pe­o­ple are invested in the leag­ue, they are obliged to make it work.”

But what exactly does ‘making it work’ mean? What is the measure of success? Giving athletes a platform to perform, increasing a sport’s popularity among the masses, and creating robust grassroot systems is basic dictum for anyone getting their fingers into sports today. It is the reason national federations exist and why sports budgets allocate them a significant (if not always equitable) chunk of money. Over the years, private entities have often tried their luck at this, too — from buying franchises in national leagues, to creating sponsored products out of athletes and providing elite training spaces for those at the top end of the spectrum. In one specific case, a private entity has even co-opted a national federation, reducing administrators to puppets while doing little to progress the sport itself.

Privatisation in sport is its own paradox. Expecting a private business entity to bleed money for progressing sports is naive in the long run. Their basic desire to profit — financially, technologically and visually — from sport is undeniable. It is crowd-pulling stuff that the entertainment industry struggles to fictionalise. Investment may not always create immediate profit, but more importantly, if the market isn’t geared for change, investment dries up, too. Nobody wants to keep running into a wall of loss.

Those involved with the PVL realise this. “Let’s be clear, sport doesn’t return any money in 2-3 years,” the league’s CEO and Baseline Vice President Joy Bhattacharya says. “If it gets successful, it will return in a massive way. If Shah Rukh Khan looks at the valuation of KKR today, it would have risen by more than 20 times since the time he bought the franchise. But this doesn’t happen overnight.”

Safeer PT, the co-owner of Calicut Heroes, sees the investment as a long-term gain. Safeer is CEO and co-founder of Beacon Infotech, an IT company based out of Dubai and Calicut. Much before the leagues, they invested in volleyball at the grassroots, hosting and organising local tournaments in Malappuram and Calicut, putting together a team with players on a regular salary and giving them company employment just to play the sport as professionals.

“I don’t come from some big rich family,” Safeer says. “And so, to be clear, I can’t just spend money for no reason whats­oever. But here there is actual worth. First, because we start­ed from the grassroots, people relate to us more. When they see our team on TV, our brand gets a boost. People trust us more. Think about it, four play­ers who were part of our team in local leagues are now in the PVL. I consider it a huge win. No other team can say that!”

Even as the league enters the business end of the season, the rift between the organisers and the federation continues to flicker unabated. The VFI scheduled their Nationals to clash directly with the dates of the league, and over the past week have also announced the launch of their own franchise-based league — the Indian Volleyball League — later this year.

Bhattacharya remains optimistic that all of this can only mean well for the sport in the country. “We’re not saying we are the only ones who will do this. The federation is more than welcome to hold their own league if it creates more opportunities for the players.”

For what it’s worth, even this little administrative competition has boosted the game in the country — even by solely forcing different sets of old men to pull their socks up.

Bengaluru Torpedoes’ captain Ranjit Singh agrees: “For years, we craved tournaments and struggled to justify playing the sport. It takes a toll on you, financially and psychologically. For years, I’ve tried to play abroad, but found it tough because there wasn’t enough exposure under my belt. Now the exposure has come to me. It’s a good chance to show our worth.”