Sports sponsorship: Cricket dominates but others are gaining, says report

Football, boxing, badminton, kho kho and kabaddi are finding sponsors too, finds GroupM report

Football, kabaddi, kho kho and other sports got Rs 2,094 crore, or 15 per cent, of the Rs 14,209-crore that marketers spent on sports in 2022. As usual, the lion’s share – 85 per cent (Rs 12,115 crore) – went to cricket. The good news, though, is that the share of emerging sports has gone up a bit – it was 13 per cent in 2021. These insights come from “Sporting Nation in the Making,” GroupM’s annual look at the sports sponsorship business.

GroupM, one of India’s largest media agencies, is part of the $18-billion WPP, which, along with Publicis, Interpublic et al, is among the world’s top five marketing services groups. The report, now in its tenth year, shows that sports, led by cricket, has delivered a compounded annual growth rate of 14 per cent.

The sports sponsorship business includes sponsorship, sports celebrity spends, and sports media spends.

Vinit Karnik, head, entertainment, esports and sports, GroupM, South Asia, is chuffed about the ecosystems developing around football, kabaddi, volleyball and the other sports. “For other sports to get this 2 per cent increase in share is not easy in a cricket-crazy country. Cricket has built its loyalty over 40 years,” he says, adding, “The Reliance Foundation, JSW, Tatas, Indian Railways, so many organisations are putting in an effort into building other sports. For a country of 1.4 billion people, one sport is not enough. Our eventual goal should be a fit and sports playing nation, not just a sport watching one.”

The money that media companies spend on sports programming online, on TV and other media remains by far the biggest chunk of the Rs 14,209 crore. Of this, TV remains the largest, albeit with a growth rate that is way lower than digital.

The growth in sponsorship, which has more than doubled after the pandemic, stands out. This is essentially the money spent on on-ground advertising, team sponsorship and franchise fees.

The growth in endorsements (20 per cent) shows that at least some money is going to celebrities in sports other than cricket. Celebrity endorsement for other sports grew by 30 per cent against 18 per cent for cricket.

Cricket, especially the Indian Premier League (IPL), dominates the sports economy in India. But is it just men's cricket, which has always been up there, or will the Women’s Premier League (WPL) also manage to make money?

“It is the first season. The very fact that Rs 951 crore was paid for media rights, that 4-6 teams got Rs 90 crore as franchise fee, and that there are huge crowds and corporate support shows that it is a dream beginning. The real impact will be known after 10 years,” thinks Karnik.

On the subject of the exhaustion with IPL, a 15-year-old media property, and its ability to make a profit, he says the current season of the league, which began earlier this week, will be critical.

“Earlier, the revenues were camouflaged because TV and digital rights were sold together. This is a good year for the discovery of its real value since both the rights have been sold separately,” says Karnik.

Disney has the linear TV rights, while Jio’s Viacom18 has the digital ones. Each of them paid roughly Rs 24,000 crore for a five-year term. Add to this the operating, production and marketing costs. Not surprisingly, most analysts do not expect this IPL to make a profit. Disney India had paid Rs 16,347 crore for both TV and digital rights for five years for the last IPL, which ended in 2022.  It made an operating profit of just about Rs 2,300 crore, according to Media Partners Asia data.