Has IPL helped other sports in India?
Has IPL helped other sports in India?
Introduction
The Indian Premier League (IPL) as we all know is a league sports introduced in Indian cricket in the T20 format. It was introduced in 2008, and has since picked up popularity with both players and the audience. With several Bollywood celebrities and millionaire businessmen owning the clubs, it has added glamour quotient to the IPL matches.
League matches and other sports
It is food for thought that the essence of the game is lost in the purchase and sale of players, involvement of players in ads, and the excessive commercialization of the game. However, it has been running successfully, therefore it means it enjoys the support of the viewers. The IPL has been immensely successful; it has been a profitable venture for both the players and the stakeholders. This has also helped in reaching cricket to new audiences. The twenty-twenty format is also an incentive for those who find the technicalities of cricket confusing (such as in a Test series).
The success of IPL has led to leagues in other sports. Recently, the Hockey India League was launched. The hockey league has also won itself a fair amount of viewers. In the normal course, even though hockey is the national sport of India, it leads a humble and poor life, when compared to the glamour and popularity that cricket as a game enjoys in India. There are also plans to begin a football league series.
In that sense, the IPL serves as an inspiration for other sports. A league match will always be beneficial for popularizing a sport, and help earn some revenue. While other sports might not enjoy the same amount of popularity cricket does, it will help in dusting off and polishing the image of lesser known sports. Having a league sport will also introduce sportspersons to the viewers.
One huge benefit of the IPL model is the involvement of private sponsors. This is a two way street. It is beneficial to both the sponsors, and the sport. Similarly, if other sports also find sponsorship support, it will help in boosting the sport as well. It will bring to the front lesser known players in fields like hockey, football, badminton, or tennis.
Most of these sport associations in India have already started planning league matches of their own. The proposed badminton league has reportedly signed up Deepika Padukone and Aamir Khan as brand ambassadors.
Conclusion
The commercialization of cricket in the IPL is a non-desirable side-effect of the IPL. To keep the spirit of the gentleman’s game; perhaps we should stick to Test matches and regular ODIs. Old timers might not be too thrilled with the developments. However, if this will inspire other sports, it will give a shot in the arm to the ailing sectors of Indian sports.
Discussion
- RE: Has IPL helped other sports in India? -Deepa Kaushik (05/02/14)
- IPL has created a major change in the history of the sports. The league matches have given upliftment for the other games to come up with a similar plan. We have visualised the similar league matches for Hockey. Though Hockey is the national sport of our country, still it had faded away with its charm and lustre lost long back. With the league matches, it has attracted some of its fans back into action.
The league matches are a good source of entertainment to the common man, especially the fans for the particular sport. It also encourages the players with good payment and fame. The fame indirectly generates passive income in the form of advertisements. These league matches also generate good revenue, which can be utilised for promoting the game, especially among the children who can lead this to the future.
We are visualizing the downward trend of cricket among the children and youth today. They have already stated focussing on the other sports. It is a good time to attract their focus towards other games as well. With the invent of IPL, all the other sports also have started to follow the trend. We can also expect a similar league match for the football and other sports.
To summarize, IPL definitely have paved way to the faded glory of the other sports than cricket. We hope to have all the sports flourishing in India soon with a good amount of audience witnessing and cheering up the players on the ground.
- Has IPL helped other sports in India? -Nupur Bhargava (04/04/14)
Has IPL helped other sports in India?
The IPL Concept was formerly envisioned for a football tournament in India but it was vetoed by the All India Football Federation. Lalit Modi, an entrepreneur later applied it to cricket. Cricket being the most popular sport in India has the requisites to contrivance it.
As I said before the idea of IPL was of the hockey association, later it was seen in Cricket and now even Badminton has taken this idea and launched its IBL, i.e., Indian Badminton League and now the Indian Hockey Association has also followed the trend and Hockey India League will be soon launched in this year, followed by football which also going to copy the trend and is launching its league by this year end. Whereas sports like tennis, basketball, volleyball are envisioning a similar kind of pattern as IPL and will soon follow the suit.
So as we see that most of the sports are trying to follow the suit, but will they succeed is the question. In spite of hockey being the national sport of India, it is not been given as much importance as it should be, instead cricket is given more importance than hockey. Hence it is not necessary that what worked for cricket will surely work for other sports as well. The IPL has helped new players to identify and showcase their talent but the drawback is that those players have limited scope and most of them do not get the opportunity to play in the National or International tournaments? The biggest shortcoming of IPL is players have the authority to decide on the franchise instead of the country they will be playing for and the main reason for this is money.
Funds is one of the main reason why other sports want to start such leagues, as they feel that the way IPL has let cricket raise funds it will also help the other sports raise some funds for their individual sports. The second major reason is, in leagues like this there are various private companies who sponsor the funds for the team and hence the government need not shell out money for such kind of tournaments. When the private organisations are funding it is obvious that the pay to the players will be much higher than the compensation provided by the government. For example, in Cricket companies like Pepsico, Dabur, Apeejay groups are involved as sponsors; whereas if you see the Hockey Premier League, Sahara, Dabur and such huge brands are involved as sponsors.
Hence although most of the sports associations are trying to adopt the league suit but will all the sports achieve same success or not is a matter of question. As we discussed in this article, it is the money that is attracting all sports to follow the suit.
