Business of sports. A sporty knock from India Inc

Dusty Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh is known as the city of tala and talim (locks and education). Soon it may be known as the handball capital of India. It’s from here that automotive parts solutions company Pavna Industries is spearheading the Premier Handball League (PHL), pumping serious money into the sport. A keen sports enthusiast, Swapnil Jain, MD of Pavna Industries, and his wife, Priya Jain, personally lead the sporting ventures of the company, which has also invested in cricket. Pavna Sports Ventures, a separate business unit the company has created, has a team, California Golden Eagles, in the US Premier league. “We have set aside ₹75-100 crore as working capital for the sports unit,” says Jain. 

Cut to Kolkata. Shrachi group MD Rahul Todi, who also leads its sporting arm, Shrachi Sports, has had a really busy September. He was in Chennai, cheering his motorsports team, Bengal Rarh Tigers, at the Indian Racing League’s street night race. From there he flew to Paris for the Paralympics, where the group was supporting athletes. And then back to Kolkata for some football action — Shrachi has a three-year alliance with the Indian Football Association and interests in the Calcutta Football League.

Owned by the Todi family, the group, which is into real estate, agro business and engineering, is pretty serious about its sporting venture. “We are looking at an investment of ₹200–250 crore in sports. It is a pure business venture for us,” Rahul Todi says expansively, outlining ambitious plans to create sports infrastructure and academies. 

Gone are the days when corporates supported sports as a form of patronage. It is fast becoming serious business. Many companies have sporting verticals or SBUs with a CEO at the head and a chief commercial officer looking at the P&L.

Of course, the big daddies are Reliance Sports and JSW Sports. The latter, according to its website, delivered revenues of ₹23 million from its various sporting assets. These are considerable. Set up in 2012, JSW Sports is today associated with teams such as Bengaluru FC, Delhi Capitals, Haryana Steelers, Pretoria Capitals, and Delhi Capitals women’s squad, as also athletes like Neeraj Chopra, cricketers Axar Patel, Dhruv Jurel, Jemimah Rodrigues, and Shafali Verma, wrestler Sakshi Malik, and many more.

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Says Suhail Chandhok, who heads the sporting vertical of Ronnie Screwvala’s Unilazer Ventures, “Sports is today seen as a profitable venture, whether it’s in year one or two, or year five, six or seven. I think there is a real bullishness and optimism about why corporates are investing in sport.”

Unilazer took a punt on kabaddi in 2014 and, today, Chandhok says, the Pro Kabaddi League is the most lucrative sporting league in the country after cricket. “When you look at the economics of it, teams were bought at under ₹2 crore when the league was first launched. Since then, the only team that was sold was Bengal Warriors, and that went at a price upwards of ₹100 crore. We ourselves have received offers for ₹200 crore,” he says.

“With 300 million viewers per season, we’ve seen a massive rise in sponsorship valuation as well. I think we did 65 per cent more than what we had done in the previous season,” he adds.

According to a Group M report, ‘Making of a sporting nation’, the business of sports has grown to such an extent in India that sponsorships (inclusive of ground, team and franchise fee), athlete endorsements, and media spends have cumulatively delivered a revenue of ₹15,766 crore in 2023, with a double-digit (11 per cent) growth over the previous year.

The biggest contributor to the increment was franchise fee, which added almost ₹1,000 crore in just one year. “This is a testament to the robustness of the franchising ecosystem in India, a trail blazed by the IPL,” says the report. Not surprising then that corporates are queuing up to own franchises.

It’s not cricket... alone

Cricket is where the rich pickings are — look at Chennai Super Kings Cricket Ltd’s (CSKCL) impressive balance sheet in FY24, which showed a four-fold increase in profit after tax to ₹229 crore from ₹52 crore a year ago.

But what is interesting is that many of the corporates entering the sporting arena are taking bets on non-cricket games, which is riskier considering the longer gestation involved, and fewer revenue options.

On the other hand, the investments are less, so they can spread themselves out more. 

Take the way the Punit Balan group has invested in teams in several leagues including Ultimate Table Tennis, Global Chess League and Pro Panja. 

Premier Handball League was launched in 2023 | Photo Credit: -

As Pavna’s Jain says, in the handball league, which commenced in 2023, there are currently just three revenue avenues — franchise fee, sponsorship, and ticketing, which is not much yet. Media rights, which gives cricket and kabaddi franchise investors a bulk of their revenue, is nil in handball.

Similarly, Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd’s Akhilesh Reddy, who has invested upwards of ₹250 crore in setting up a motor racing league in India through Racing Promotion Pvt Ltd (RRPL), does not foresee quick returns. It’s a costly sport with huge investments. 

But passion drives him, and the fact that there are now six franchises and many more are showing interest is a cause for optimism.

Unilazer Ventures, which has investments in kabaddi (U Mumba), table tennis (U Mumba TT) and chess (Mumba Masters), is already reaping profits in the former. “As a team we broke even in season two itself. Barring a couple of seasons that shifted to October-December, when flights, hotels, logistics cost went up, kabaddi teams have generally been profitable,” he says. Chandhok feels kabaddi should be 3X of what it is today — we are underselling as far as the sport goes, he says.

And when it comes to the fledgling chess league, he says that revenue is still largely dependent on prize money. “So if you don’t hit your prize money as winners and runners-up, it is not profitable at all. But I think that chess will be very profitable in the future,” he says. The recent golden showing of the Indian team in the Chess Olympiad is buoying hopes. 

“I see India being a powerhouse, and I do see brands coming into chess more in the next two to three years,” he says.

Missing ecosystem

For those betting on emerging sports, the big challenge is in developing an ecosystem. Today, kabaddi is able to command media rights, but the others need to not only build viewership but also secure international standard players, develop infrastructure, and spread the sport.

But the corporates seem to be rising to the challenge. Jain of Pavna, for instance, is pushing handball into educational institutions. Since the group owns a DPS school, it has made inroads there. It has also set up a Centre of Excellence to provide training in handball and cricket. 

“We have identified around 40 players from all over India. So we have girls and boys from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Gujarat to Assam receiving proper training. We have come up with a beautiful complex for handball, where they train. We provide them education through DPS,” he says.

“My goal is to see an Indian handball team take part in the 2032 Olympics,” he adds.

Reddy says his goal is to see the emergence of not just more Indian car racers but also mechanics and technicians in this field. RRPL has instituted scholarships, and sponsors the training of both racers and technicians.

India Inc is certainly speeding on the sporting lane.