Indian Football - Still a "land unexplored"

The Football Culture – The Fans

Crazy football fans in Kolkata

The popularity of football in India is at an all time high. In a survey conducted by Celebrity Management Group in 2011, it was revealed while there has been as many as 176 million viewers for cricket in India at the latter part of the last decade, the figures for football has almost touched their cricket counter-part at 155 million.

But now, here lies the fallacy. The past decade has seen an highly aggressive marketing of European football and with extensive broadcast of various foreign leagues, there has been a massive rise in football fans among the Indian urban population, who have pledged their loyalties towards various European clubs – making their brand of football, a highly followed and researched one at this part of the world.

However, the interest towards the indigenous brand has remained limited – which is understandable given the unplanned “hoof-ball” nature of play here – hardly serving the aesthetic point of view.

In addition, the clubs have done virtually nothing to reach out to the fans. The Kolkata derby between traditional arch rivals Mohun Bagan and East Bengal sees attendances that swells up to 100,000 – even bigger than the El Clasico or the Manchester Derby – but that is just about the only game that actually reminds you of what could have been of Indian football.

Lack of official fan clubs, supporters’ trust, non-existent platform for official merchandises, no season ticketing, official club channels being a mere myth and various other factors have contributed to the sheer negligence of the clubs towards their fans. The emergence of North East representation in the I-League has somewhat been a saving grace – with the clubs showing consistent attendance records from the fans.

What Can Be Learned From Cricket?

Can Indian football replicate a league like IPL?

The football minority have looked on in skepticism as the cricketing body flourished in the country both financially and in terms of results. Cricket’s exponential rise over the years have often been seen as “fishy” and with the game being recently marred by off-field controversies involving match fixing and betting, the outsiders feel that the cricket body’s “unlawful” activities have been the primary reason for the money that is now there in cricket.

And as outrageous as it may sound, a vast majority of the “non-cricket” community deem cricket responsible for the downfall of football as well as other sports in India. However, despite being a staunch football advocate, such a school of thought, in my opinion, is nothing but a case of ‘sour grapes’.

It is imperative to understand, for a product to be so successful, it can’t be solely run in a corrupt way for all these years. Obviously, there has to be a lot of “good’ people doing a lot of good work, from the grass-root level to the apex, that has made cricket what it is today in the country.

Yes again, a product as big as Indian cricket, will also at times attract some very ordinary people or rather creepers who will try to reap undue benefits of what is a highly flourishing model – but that is just a part of the package and turning a blind eye towards all the good lessons that can be taken from cricket’s incredible rise, because of that, is rather delusional.

The cricket body had been incredibly proactive in marketing the game, when they were backed by the results, turning the game into a national obsession. Such proactive-ness from the part of football, or perhaps any other game, has been somewhat missing and while there has been patches of good periods in terms of results, no one has really been able to cash on to it – Good things have easily been forgotten!