How to increase the popularity of basketball in India

At the end of the day, what sells is what people will buy. And what people will buy, is mostly what is shoved down their throats with the most force. Invasive marketing is the word of the day. It’s a jungle out here. Wake up in the morning and there are five SMSs on your cell. Not from your lovey dovey, but from Fair and Lovely, promising to get your lovey dovey in your arms. Wake up and open the newspaper with your morning coffee and you have to first flip past the innumerable layers of ads on the first few pages. Even the inside pages are inundated with ads; bright and happy people with shiny teeth, eager to share the secret of happiness with you. These are the things which sell. Open the day’s paper and the odds are you will find some sports league being endorsed by some celebrity.

Even a sport like Kabaddi has Akshay Kumar promoting it. Basketball has a few famous celebrities who support it but for the masses, there aren’t many recognizable faces who are regularly active in promoting basketball.

Ranbir Kapoor took some pics with Kobe Bryant, as did Dino Morea, and so did Lara Dutta. It’s like there’s a Kobe Bryant lookalike or cardboard cutout which poses for pictures with Bollywood stars. If so, I hope we can get a hold of that and have it handy at all our basketball competitions. I know the NBA has a couple of cutouts handy.

‘Sony SIX – NBA 3X’ at Mood Indigo – IIT Powai | Final Day!

Hah! There it is! Quick, someone pilfer it!

Or maybe we shouldn’t use it at the gates of our basketball competitions. Looking at Kobe’s cutout. All I can think of is the line by Gandalf in LOTR. “None shall pass!.” Having it at our competitions will be counter productive. People will be turned away from the gate. Perhaps it’s better to have it at the exit. That way, we can trap the fans who have come to watch the game and breed a colony of basketball fans who never leave the premises, and all they do is be a fan until their days are numbered. Sounds a little sinister, breeding a cult by trapping them in an enclosure and throwing away the key. It’s a proof of how despondent things seem in Indian basketball that I’m even throwing out such an idea.

All the theory I studied in Sports Management is about the sports leagues abroad. It’s like a Bizzaro dimension here in India, an alternate reality.

Here’s how the model of a sports league works in theory:

- League sells broadcast rights and gets revenue from ticket and merchandise sales.- Broadcaster who buy the rights sells ad slots.- Ads bring in revenue.

If you play basketball, you are in the minority in India. Cricket rules the roost and football is in the hearts of the masses. Basketball probably comes third in this list. And I’m not talking economically. I’ve no clue how far down basketball is on the list of popular sports in India. So many sports in India have been blessed with leagues which are televised. Basketball is still awaiting that day. It’s the other way around here – to have the Savio Cup telecast on DD Sports, the organizers had to pay them to show it on TV! The entire economic model of a sports league, with gate revenue and TV rights and merchandise, is completely inapplicable in India. There is no gate revenue in basketball matches, and 2000-5000 is considered a good turnout. There are no TV rights. And merchandise sales are a long way down the horizon. We don’t have a proper market for a league here in India yet.

What can be the possible reasons for it?

1. Not enough monetary support from the federation

In theory, the federation’s coffers are filled by the government and through whatever it can make on its own. In India, sports federations are registered under the societies act. That means that they are non profit organizations. What profit they make is plugged back in the game. The extent to which the federations can provide support depends on the amount they make. And the amount they make depends on how well the game is marketed.

2. Media prejudice

Indian media doesn’t do too much justice to basketball. The sport doesn’t have its own dedicated talk show or a weekly show or any show which shows the game in India. The NBA and Liga Endesa is shown on Sony SIX. But the domestic competitions aren’t telecast nearly as much as they should be. DD Sports is one channel which shows some competitions, and their coverage leaves a lot to be desired. Interrupting a live telecast to show Sports Hour or whatever they were showing, won’t work too well for the game. Last year at the Savio Cup, the semis were supposed to be telecast live, but the news van with satellite had gone to cover the marathon. Substitute van had some mixups and instead of the basketball match, they ended up showing some gymnastics for the first half. When coverage resumed in second half, a lot of the plot of the game was lost. Here’s what happened there:

https://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/01/19/7th-savio-cup-sfs-vs-ongc-ii-murphys-law-in-effect/

The bottom line here is that if the sport is popular and marketable, then it will sell well eventually. There are talks of a football league in India with franchises, in 2014. It seems that every year we hear a basketball league coming up and every year we wait for the next year. We asked the question to you guys, the readers, on what can be done to improve the popularity of the game in India. Here are some of the responses:

- more courts.- more competitions with cash prize.- a League!- more exposure on TV channels.- remove politics.

Those are all ideal solutions. Hopefully, we can work our way towards them soon. It would be ideal if we could have our Indian basketball tournaments shown on TV more often. That could pave the way for a league more quickly. If you haven’t seen Indian national players in action, I’ve tried to put some videos here;

https://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/06/02/basketball-india-video-archive-sidbreakballs-vids/

Check them out, and if you like the action, then spread the message. Get more people to tune into Indian basketball. With the rate its popularity is soaring, hopefully it won’t be too long before a league crops up. Not to suggest that merely watching the game videos will pave the way to a league, but increasing the visibility of the game online can surely help in some way.