Financial Opportunities and Challenges in the Indian Sports Industry: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

The Indian sports industry has been undergoing a radical transformation and growth over the past decade with the commercialisation and media rights, sponsorships and fan engagement through digital platforms, Khelo India and the Fit India Movement are just a few of the changes that have been witnessed by the industry in this period. The success of these domestic leagues, Indian Premier League (IPL), Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) and Indian Super League (ISL) has led to a lot of investments from both domestic and international sources, which has led to a variety of revenue streams, such as broadcasting rights, merchandising, sports tourism, fantasy sports and analytics. However, there are structural problems in the sport: imbalanced infrastructure, cricket-centric funding, absence of cricket sports monetisation, governance issues and absence of financial transparency. The study is based on a quantitative, descriptive approach to understand the finances opportunities and challenges of the Indian sports industry empirically. The primary data was collected on the basis of a structured questionnaire having five point likert scale from 400 respondents which included athletes, sports administrators, journalists and sports enthusiasts who were analysed through reliability analysis, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and regression (ANOVA). The Cronbach's α values of all the measurement scales were within the acceptable range of 0.786-0.877. The results show that financial opportunities are highly correlated with financial problems (r = 0.591, p < 0.01), there is a strong relationship between the financial opportunities and new financial-management trends (F = 532.83, p < 0.001), the financial opportunities are a strong predictor of adoption of new financial resources (F = 373.35, p < 0.001), and the financial opportunities are a significant predictor of exploration of new opportunities and problems (F = 247.03, p < 0.001). The study finds that diversifying sources of revenue, use of FinTech and Data-driven decision making and public–private partnerships are essential for the financial sustainability of Indian sport in the long run.