Opinion: Is the Indian Super League a sustainable concept?

Is Icarus about to fly too close again attempting to outdo Daedalus or is it coming of age and creation of a property for a set of fans and athletes with nothing to call their own? With the ISL having kicked-off on the 12th of October, the count of nationwide professional sports leagues in India reaches to 6 starting with IPL. The fans are not complaining. Is anyone complaining though? Is there reason to complain? This number – 6, is not counting the leagues that have ceased to exist like the ICL or PHL. This also does not count the semi-professional leagues within the states and cities. To put in perspective, just in the city of Pune, there already are Tennis, Badminton, Chess, Table-Tennis, Football and Cricket leagues which feature national level players.

The opening ceremony, was, like all previous such ceremonies – a grand event, the follow-up has to now match if not surpass. With the Pro-Kabaddi league, it was a case of under-promise and over-deliver. The Pro-Kabaddi league served its purpose very fittingly, assuming that the purpose was popularising the sport. How many of us knew there was another similar league operational simultaneously? Only in one sport have the professional leagues, so far as we can measure, been able to generate players that can represent the country – Cricket. The IPL too had to for the lack of a better word ‘kill’ its competitor the ICL. It is the other way round with the rest of the leagues. How much of it is attributable to the flux in the Sport itself? Considering that the sport of cricket is changing very fast, and shorter format appeals to the lay-fan, and is a reservoir of revenue through the broadcast route, it is digestible that the IPL is at least a success in the realms of talent scouting and grooming. The purpose of the IPL was purely commercial, and it was a logical tangible option with already a high viewership and presence of almost all the marquee stars. Another fact that cannot be discounted is that the format and rules of IPL are in line with those of international T20.

But is the ISL a hubris on the part of the sponsors, corporates and the few entities that are common across these leagues? Or is there genuinely a space that can accommodate a few more such properties? Are the analysts measuring too much too soon? Does it make sense to have leagues which attract modest talent yet monumental advertising, justified? In a country which ranks well out of the top 100 in football and the state of other sports pretty much at a similar if not a worse level, is the league structure the best alternative of growing these Sports?

At the risk of pitching a sport against another, a never advisable idea, the Pro-Kabbaddi league had a fantastic launch – indigenous talent managing to popularise their sport. The IPL managed to rope in the homemaker as a genuine audience, the Pro-Kabaddi league to some extent did that with the EPL & Champions League fans. With doubts still lurking over the sustainability of the IPL – in terms of sporting or ticketing revenue, does another league, which to speak freely has secondary level players or players who are well past their prime and some who are examples of the Peter Principle – for an audience who is prone and used to watching and following superstars of global football, make sense? 

European football is currently debating the financial fair play paradigm whilst majority of the clubs struggle to reach break even points and have huge tax liabilities. And this is true for the premier leagues in the top three followed destinations – EPL, La Liga and Serie-A. Some estimates put the growth of the football market in Europe at 4% in 2010/11 – this despite the economic upheaval. Problem though lies in the fact that amidst all the growth in revenues, even top football clubs are facing a lot of pressure on their balance sheets. Football clubs lower down their national pyramids face an even more perilous situation. 

How should sustainability and success be measured? Does one come before the other or are they mutually exclusive? Consider this, the college football and basket-ball are probably the most watched and followed leagues in the US, but they are not the most revenue generating. The likes of NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB & MLS have a very small audience in the rest of the world. All of them have a history of more than 50 years with MLS being the youngest sibling at 18 years. In the US itself, the EPL is the 4th ranked league ahead of NHL in terms of revenue, but with average attendance of 15,000, the revenue metrics of the Big Four are heavily skewed on the side of television viewership. Secondly, the leagues are the primary source of satisfaction, exertion and income for the all the entities involved – as against this, all the sports that India has leagues of, India has to participate year round on the global stage and the major players ascertain more importance to that and rightly so. 

Another thing the ISL stakeholders have to be aware about is that the league has a window of just two months, as against all the other leagues which run for mostly the entire year and have a gap of about two months. This means that the ISL players will have to endure a lot of match exhaustion with a lot less gap between games. Secondly, the fan engagement will have to be recreated after ten months. Ten months is a long time in a relationship, and where loyalty has to be generated first, rather than maintained, it is going to be a tough ask. The two-month window system works for the IPL because most of the players are also occupied throughout the year and loyalty is subject to frequency bias rather than recency bias. The short spurt also possibly will work for the Pro-Kabaddi League because of the novelty. Then there is the small matter of the I-League.

To go back to the question of sustainability, in Environmental studies there is a concept of the ‘Daly Rules’ approach. If we apply an analogy of the ‘Daly Rules’ approach, what ideally should be the strategy of ISL would be something like this:

Renewable resources (new Indian players) must be used no faster than the rate at which they regenerate
Non-renewable resources (current Indian players) must be used no faster than renewable substitutes (Foreign players) for them can be put into place

Having said this, there clearly is a wave of hope – for the players and fans. Hopefully for us, the administration too is looking at this likewise. The powers that be have to look at this, at least in the early years, as an opportunity for international exposure for the players. With the FIFA ranking system and India’s complete lack of planning (playing games on FIFA specified dates), the national players rarely get a chance to rub shoulders with even the second best. Moreover, with the eyes of a large chunk of international media, the facilities will have to be top notch and this bodes well for the Indian players.

Secondly, however out of favour the imports are, they have kicked at the highest stages; the Indian players can only benefit by being in that illustrious company. A note of caution to the Indian players – be okay with not being in the spotlight and don’t compare yourselves to the cricketers and other stars. To conclude, there shouldn’t be too much of a problem with verbing nouns if they manage to catch eyeballs – so ‘Let’s Football’!