A sporting investment

Globally, corporate surpluses spur excellence in sports

Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore has earned some brownie points by agreeing to tackle the complaints of the coach of javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra about the lack of support from the Sports Authority of India (SAI). Mr Chopra’s German coach talked of “very bad support” from the SAI in terms of equipment deliveries, approval for foreign trips, and recruitment of support staff. Mr Rathore assured the coach and his charge that he would take up their problems in the Union cabinet to ensure that the SAI is empowered to hire the best people and deliver the optimal support services to the country’s elite athletes. Mr Chopra is one of India’s brightest hopes, having won gold at the 2018 Asian Games, setting a new national record in the bargain, and deserves all the help he can get. But in relying on the SAI as the sole support system, both he and Mr Rathore may be misplacing their hopes. Exclude China and the countries of the former Soviet Union, where state support for national athletes was seen as a showcase of national pride, and the pattern is clear: The most successful countries in the global sporting arena have grown on corporate investment, which has, in turn, created a booming sports industry in which governments play but a facilitating role.

In that respect, corporations in India are still not big enough nor do they generate the kind of surpluses that can underwrite a not-for-profit industry that delivers sustained success in the international sporting arena of the kind that, say, the US, Europe or Australia takes for granted. It is significant that Mr Chopra’s coach spoke of tapping companies and other sources before raising the issue with the media. Indeed, Mr Rathore, a silver medallist in double trap shooting, is well placed to understand this fundamental issue. As a colonel in the Indian army, both his relatively comfortable family background and his employer provided a solid foundation for him to pursue his career in his chosen sport. India’s only individual Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra, who won gold for the 

10-metre air rifle event at the Beijing Olympics, owed little to any state bandobast for his success. He came from a wealthy Punjabi family and was able to practise in an indoor shooting range installed in his home in Patiala. Mr Chopra is also in the army, but being a junior commissioned officer (a naib subedar) with a modest family background means that he requires rather more financial support than Mr Rathore or Mr Bindra.

In terms of a sports culture, however, India is on the cusp of change. The traditional underwriters of sports — the public sector banks and the Railways — are gradually exiting the scene, and the surging private sector is yet to fill the void in a meaningful way. India’s national passion for cricket showed the way for corporate participation with its Indian Premier League T20 tournament, which has done wonders in creating an eco-system for talent far beyond India’s major cities. The same structure has been replicated with some success in badminton, hockey, football and kabaddi (wrestling is one of the exceptions, relying on the well-funded akhara system for support). In the first two sports, these privately sponsored leagues have fed into India’s improving performance in international tournaments. With the exception of badminton, however, the other sports are team events. As yet, similar eco-systems have not emerged for individual events such as track and field or tennis, possibly because Indian athletes lag their global counterparts quite significantly. Whether success in the global arena will initiate the change or whether some unusual industrialist decides to sink his money in Indian athletics is the moot question now.