The Hindu : The hunt for a sponsor begins

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 19, 2003

Sport

Sport - Hockey

The hunt for a sponsor begins

By S. Thyagarajan

Chennai June 18. A significant fallout of the recent Indian triumph in Australia is the debate on marketing hockey. More than the successful tour of Down Under, what has added to the urgency in identifying a sponsor for Indian hockey is the pull-out by Castrol, citing cost cutting as the chief reason. Perforce, the Indian Hockey Federation is forced to hunt for a benefactor.

Efforts are in full swing to zero in on a famous brand name and the details may be worked out in a week or two. Sources indicate that a few have been shortlisted for weighing the options before clinching the deal.

While speculation is rife as to who eventually agrees to bear the burden of steering Indian hockey through to the Champions Trophy, the Olympics next year and thereafter, the point that needs to be stressed is that it is not easy to rope in a sponsor willing to shell out Rs. 1 crore or more a year to a non-cricketing sport which does not command organised or programmed television time.

It may be true that hockey is still being touted as the national sport as a result of India winning eight gold medals and having built up a great international tradition. But the painful reality today is that India does not enjoy a high rating, nor is hockey a national game as it was two or three decades ago. The loss of image is not merely due to a succession of poor performances at the World Cup and Olympics over the years, but largely on account of an impervious administrative apparatus that allowed things to drift, unmindful of the consequences.

Sheathed in the amateur fold for years on end, the hockey administrators were shackled from indulging in aggressive marketing unlike their counterparts in cricket, tennis and golf. Even the International Hockey Federation cocooned itself for decades within the ambit of amateurism to stay put in the Olympics as the only goal.

So there has never been an effective marketing strategy for hockey, both at the national and international level till a few years ago when commercialism swept everything, including the sacred arena of the Olympic Games since the mid-eighties. By the time, the FIH woke up to the importance of marketing the sport and chasing television space it was too late to catch up with the extraordinary progress made by F-1 racing, soccer, golf, tennis and what not.

For some strange reason, the FIH was over cautious of selling hockey. More than once, the former President, Mr. Etinne Glitchitch, observed that the flow of money from a sponsor only brought in its wake a lot of problems to the administration. He always believed that a title sponsor would have a finger in the pie of administration, or at least consciously create a bottleneck in the smooth functioning. The fears were genuine in the context in which he made them, pointing out the power and pelf of the sponsors in F-1 racing pushing the administration far into the background.

Thankfully, the line of thinking within the FIH has transformed, and rightly so, in keeping with the times, under the dynamic leadership of Els van Breda Vriesmann, and the Secretary, Peter Cohen. In fact, the whole concept today in the FIH is to force the pace, and hit the market to sell the charm, craft and colour of contemporary hockey. That the FIH succeeded in roping a global sponsor, Rabobank and BDO from the Netherlands, is a tribute to the dedication and dynamics of the current administration.

Nothing has deterred the FIH from cruising into the market, which includes employing its own production team under the gregarious David Christisen of ABC (Australia) to produce clips of major championships at a cost of US $ 25,000 and serve to major news channels like BBC and CNN. The impact is said to be tremendous to the point of encouraging the FIH, and the producer to sell out a package to the members of the Asian Broadcasting Union (ABU) free of cost so as to make the sport more visual than ever in the sub-continent.

Against this backdrop, the problem faced by Indian hockey to enjoy a working relationship with one or two sponsors for a long period of time is sad indeed. There is a feeling that the sponsors do not get adequate feedback, or even mileage for the wherewithal they pump in. Even then some came into the fold for the sheer love of hockey, like Sahara, whose chief, Mr. Subrata Roy, wanted to carve out a new dimension to the sport as early as in 1995. For the Indira Gandhi tournament in Delhi, Sahara, then unknown in the world of cricket, offered a fleet of cars (Maruti Esteems) as prizes for various category of players.

But the FIH representative from England, Mr. Phil Appleyard, the treasurer, put the spoke in the wheel, raised objections to the gifts as not in conformity with the IOC statutes. Put out by these impediments and obviously disenchanted by the poor performance of the national team as also by the helplessness of the administration, Sahara walked out. A glorious chance of having a sponsor whose interest in hockey was more genuine than any other sponsor then was lost on the IHF.

No doubt, the IHF managed to rope in Pepsi for the India-Pakistan series, Kuber for Champions Trophy, Indian Bank for World Cup in Sydney, and Castrol for the last three years. Left in the limbo now, the IHF is widening the net in the hope that the revival in fortunes would help encourage a few to cast a look on hockey, at least for sentimental reasons than for mere economic gains.

It is time the IHF also realised that successful relationship with the sponsor is a two way traffic, and those pumping in a huge amount of money are given their due and kept satisfied when it comes to accounting and auditing. Spending money is no problem for a big sponsor but spending for what is. The IHF is duty bound to fine tune its marketing strategy so that the sponsor gets adequate returns in terms of media exposure, especially on television or on a contracted channel like Doordarshan recently.

It is a pity that the IHF has shown no urgency, or even an effort to arrange for a delayed telecast of the final match against Australia in any one of the various channels that showed immense interest in securing the result of matches, especially when India and Pakistan figured in the competitions. The highlights would definitely have changed the perceptions of a few sponsors about the quality and content of our hockey at this point of time.

The IHF may succeed, thanks to the clout wielded by a personality like the President, Mr. K.P.S. Gill, in getting the support of a sponsor but the federation must devise ways and means to keep the sponsoring unit in a happy frame of mind always and ensure important matches, like the ones that India played in Perth and Sydney recently, are telecast even after a week or two. How far will the IHF go in doing this for the forthcoming four-nation event at Hamburg is the first test in this exercise.

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