India's New Sporting Renaissance

As India embarks on a transformative journey, the country's sporting landscape is rapidly evolving with franchise cricket, streaming dynamics, and a push for non-cricketing sports

- HARSHA BHOGLE

India is at the cusp of the most interesting point as far as sports goes. The next five years will be fraught with change and disruption, as it has been in any other sphere of life. Audience tastes are hard to fathom but there is no getting away from the fact that their time will come only at a premium. That means you must it get it right quickly and perhaps always as well. By any yardstick, that is a tough one but it must be done.

Over the next five years, it will be interesting to see how two big bets pan out. To my mind, it is about franchise cricket and streaming content. The former has taken hugely impressive strides and the last decade is testimony to that. Talking of streaming, I am pretty certain that we will have moved rapidly on that one. The glitches were there in the early phase and with most of that out of the way, data now available at affordable costs will continue to propel that growth even on a large base.

Take the case of the Indian Premier League (IPL). There is a good chance we will need to look at the 94 matches quite differently. Having said that, a mid-season plateau is a possibility. Franchises, for their part, see the opportunity and interest levels holding out and that means a clear story emerging on creating fan bases much like what we have seen with the English Premier League. Just the numbers that we see on viewership or what has been paid to acquire television and digital rights convince me of even more potential that lies ahead.