Sports has been a social enabler for India. The nation with a population capping 1.3 billion has enormously supported this culture and continues to drive youth towards nation building and economic development via this medium. Yet, the growth prospects for sports development in India remain limited. This was duly brought to light by Yes Bank’s former CEO Rana Kapoor. The leader, thus, took major steps to help this sunrise sector attain vital knowledge banking solutions, and often discussed the measures impacting the overall economic growth of India.
“The importance of sports in harnessing the power of youth towards nation building and economic development has been evident ever since the 1896 Olympic Games – this has been firmly established during subsequent international sporting events across the world.” stated Kapoor.
He added, “Globally, there is growing convergence between sports and entertainment, as both rise to the challenges of new digital platforms and technologies. Sports and entertainment events are increasingly being staged together to enhance overall viewing, engagement with fans and a more intensive experience.”
Historically, sports has been linked to personality development traits and qualities including discipline, leadership, and tolerance. The youth of the nation, with adequate support, planning and focused implementation can help the nation achieve its true potential. Kapoor often highlighted that India needs to understand that their vast sum of population is a boon. Interestingly, the country preserves a huge number of youth, which is equally important to level up its performance.
Therefore, while at Yes Bank, the leader promoted multiple knowledge verticals of sports and made sure that the nation benefited from it. He avowed numerous advantages from implementation of parameters like inculcating sports as an academic subject, eliminating the shortage of trained manpower and specialists, skill gaps, sports infrastructure and sports medicine, but most importantly, building a sports culture in the society.
India has predominantly seen children opting for cricket as a career choice, but successful run in the Olympics and other major sporting events has transitioned to youth now opting for boxing, badminton, hockey and more. Each sector now employees a large number of experts from other sectors like medicine, psychology, management, which implies both physical and mental health are getting due attention.
Yes Bank’s ex-CEO often spoke on the vitality of mental health and called for certain measures to keep abreast about each individual in terms of mental satisfaction. Therefore, even while explaining growth that the sports industry can offer to both the economy and an individual, he never bogged from mentioning the mental-state of an athlete.
In recent years, the global state of attractiveness in India has been underlined by a vast number of sports events that it holds or has held in the last 2 decades. The long list includes India Premier League, Pro Kabbadi, Commonwealth Games, Hockey India League, Formula 1, Indian Badminton League, and Indian Super League. These events have given youngsters an opportunity to go and represent their national sides.
Interestingly, this has catalysed the pace of new stadiums being built, brought in new sponsors, seen a rampant shift in demand for broadcasting rights and pushed proliferation of sports advertising to a whole new level.
Rana Kapoor noted that sponsorship of an event is the largest contributor to the revenues within the Asia Pacific region. Looking at the Indian context, it is the biggest factor when counting the overall revenue. The more popularity a sport gains, the bigger sponsors it gets. Also, when an event is sponsored by a brand, for example Pepsi IPL, it naturally drives people to add brand’s name as a prefix or suffix to the event’s name, giving the brand immense popularity. However, it is to be noted that while both are interdependent of each other, the sport is always a winner in such situations.
Other challenges to develop sports infrastructure requires policy support, local buy-ins, large investments and technical knowledge. Given these state of affairs, Public Private Partnerships (PPSs) have been deployed for the sustained development of sports infrastructure.
Yes Bank, while being governed by Kapoor, also applied the development of sporting infrastructure by hosting Yes Bank Premier League. This exclusive cricket event was the first of its kind sporting platform created by the bank to engage with the key MSME community. The event in its fifth year reached out to 10 cities including Surat, Delhi, Chennai, Amritsar, Pune etc.
Sports in India is directly linked to its popularity, and the efforts by Yes Bank cannot be overlooked. Apart from hosting of Yes Bank Premier League, it also extensively backed and felicitated the Indian National Football Team (U-17), ahead of the upcoming FIFA U-17 World Cup, which was held in India.
Speaking on the occasion, Kapoor stated, “India has the potential to tap into the global sporting arena by actively realizing the full potential of its young population. Investment in sustainable sports infrastructure, sports awareness, skill development and training, are few such focus areas key to employment and inclusive socioeconomic development of the nation, via sports. At YES BANK, we take institutional pride in developing sports as a vital pillar to the growth and development of the country through innovative financial and knowledge advisory.”
India has come a long way in realising that sports as a subject matter is equally important in imparting knowledge and skills, required to lead a disciplined life. The values imparted by Rana Kapoor via his institute are, thus, invaluably linked to both personal and economic growth, which in the long term will benefit India at large.
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