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December 2008
Next Big Things
Next in: Sport
Footie’s indian summer
Kids in India may soon be buying biscuits emblazoned with the logo of Liverpool FC as the UK’s Premier League clubs move to India, football’s last significant untapped market.
Ian Ayre, Liverpool’s commercial director, recently told BritSport Weekly: “There’s no point trying to sell a replica shirt at £45 [€57] to a guy in a village. However, in my previous work not only were we licensing caps which sold for $5–$10 [€4–€8], but everyday products like biscuits – and selling over one billion units in five years. India is a well-known sweet-toothed environment, so you touch all the population at a price everyone can afford.”
The UK’s richest clubs are all sweet on the subcontinent, right now. Even Paul Barber, executive director of struggling Tottenham Hotspur told Goal.com that of the 20 million people who had ‘a positive inclination’ towards Spurs worldwide, almost four million were in India. Emboldened by the fact that India racked up the second highest viewership for February’s Carling Cup final outside the UK, Barber recently visited several Indian clubs, the Indian Football Association and major Indian companies with a view to forming partnerships.
Domestic football in India is actually far more popular than domestic cricket, and many teams in the country’s National Football League trace their origins back to the 1880s when British colonials introduced the game. Indeed, league football was being played in Calcutta long before the world governing body FIFA even existed. India qualified regularly for the Olympics until the 1960s, and was invited to the 1950 World Cup in Brazil but was stymied by a long sea journey and the fact that its team still played in bare feet.
The fact that cricket’s inaugural Indian Premier League, which went from zero to generating close to €1.25bn in a six-month period following a €775m TV deal with Sony, underscores the huge commercial opportunity for India’s exploding middle class. The cricket competition – which now thrills TV audiences of almost 60 million – was based in part on the football model, and the Premier League is already popular in India on ESPN Star. Indeed, the value of the football rights doubled in the last round of negotiations. Although many Euro 2008 matches were shown in the early hours in India, Indians were among the biggest viewers of Euro 2008 outside Europe.
Next summer, growth looks likely to accelerate when Manchester United play a friendly in India for the first time. Speaking during United’s pre-season tour of South Africa in July, United’s chief executive, David Gill, said gaining a commercial foothold in India was a priority as they seek to retain their position as the richest club in the UK.
A tournament between the UK’s biggest names in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, which is currently being upgraded to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games, would really take the biscuit.
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