“What is seen is sold” has become an old adage in this world driven by money. Big teams want to leverage the widespread appeal of teams and athletes who are at the peak of their power, like for example Virat Kohli, who is certainly the most marketable athlete in India at the moment. Neeraj Chopra is another success story that proves you don’t need to be a cricketer in India to carve out a name for yourself. If you have the talent, success will eventually chase you like a possessed spirit. Money will flow, and you will become a success story.

For Indian athletes, and this is true for most athletes around the world, a big part of their income is generated from sponsorship deals.

How Sponsorship work in Indian Sports?

Sponsorship can be categorized into many types. Teams get sponsorship in various forms from big companies, while individual athletes also earn sponsorship due to their widespread appeal. Here’s how sponsorships work in India:

• Tournament Sponsorships: This kind of sponsorship occurs when a big company wins the right to be the title sponsor of the tournament. For example, Hero is the title sponsor of the Indian Super League, and thus the tournament is called the Hero ISL.
• Team Sponsorships: You must have seen company names on the front of a team’s jersey. Those names of companies are the team sponsors.
• Player Sponsorships: As the name suggests, this is when an individual athlete agrees to endorse a company for an agreed amount, like Virat Kohli doing the advertisement for MRF Tyres.

How Sponsorships Should Also Work in Indian Sports?

We have all heard tales of how Barcelona pursued Lionel Messi. There are rumors that the contract between Barcelona and Messi was signed on a napkin. From there on, Messi needn’t worry about the money. He just needed to concentrate on growing his already immense football skills. Messi was sponsored by Barcelona from an early age.

This is one of the million stories from all around the world. In almost all developed countries, if an athlete shows promise from an early age, they start getting interest from big companies such as Nike. In addition, countries such as the USA have a proper system where aspiring athletes get all sorts of backing from the government.

Young Indian athletes, on the other hand, to a great extent, have to depend on parents for financial support. With the rising cost of education, parents eventually face a stage where they have to prioritize education over sports.

For India to become a true giant in sports, there should be a system where the government, at the very least, should always support young, talented athletes.

Why Aspiring Athletes Need Sponsorship?

Athletes need caring right from their first step into the field. Their coaching starts at home with parents and the surroundings in which they are being groomed and nurtured. Inculcating right and healthy habits is the ultimate foundation parents can lay for their precious children. From the very early age, children show signs of their liking to things. Like, in Lionel Messi’s case, he was always into football. Everyone knew, even when Messi was just a little kid, that he was born to play football. This is, more often than not, the same for most kids. As they say, Coming events cast their shadows long before.

Rising cost of pursuing sports

As kids start developing and progressing in sports, the biggest hurdle is finding the money. Let’s be honest, there are no free lunches in any field. Pursuing sports and reaching a professional level requires a lot of investment. Even in India, which is a developing market and is presumed to be a nation with low costs, sports are still costly.

First, a kid should have access to basic training facilities, if not the top-notch ones, and for that to happen, they should be in at least a second-tier city. Remote villages do not even have quality coaches, let alone the facilities. With most of India’s population in the middle class, most parents do not have the luxury of affording the education, which is extremely high in India, and allowing their kids to pursue sports. That’s why sponsorships, for the special athlete, can be a game-changer for the parents and the athlete himself.

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