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SPORTS:
FOOTBALL
Alive
And Kicking
Big business
houses are cashing in on the traditional mass appeal of the game and massive
funding has come the way of the top clubs
By
Sharda Ugra
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| BIG
BUYS: Mallya, seen here with the Bagan team after their Rovers Cup
victory, became the first to own two rival clubs, and part-funds the
third Kolkata soccer giant Mohammedan Sporting. |
If France today wears the crown in international
football, India hovers
somewhere close to bootlace-level. The country is No. 122 in the world
out of 203 nations and ranked No. 21 in Asia. An international tournament
touted to be worth Rs 40 crore is being held across the country and it
featured an Indian team which could not score a goal against international
opposition in two matches. Yet despite a grim global scenario, Indian
club football is alive and, as other sports struggle to retain sponsors,
it continues to attract big corporate bucks. This is not so much a mystery
but speaks more about the magic of football itself: irrespective of standards,
traditional rivalries draw in the crowds and regional strongholds continue
to support the game.
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| HOT
FREE: Mohan Bagan's Brazilian Barreto is the most expensive player
in Indian club football |
Mahindra
& Mahindra have shut down their cricket and hockey divisions but continue
to support a football team for what is now the squad's 44th year. Vijay
Mallya of the UB Group bought two rival Kolkata giants, a purchase quite
unprecedented in football. Goa's Chowgule Group has sponsored a cricket
tournament for 25 years now but last year they put in their support behind
the Vasco Football Club. Today, even as the All India Football Federation
(AIFF), the sport's parent body continues to be mired in controversy,
big business houses keep Indian club football afloat. Of the three Kolkata
giants, two-East Bengal and Mohun Bagan are owned by Mallya's UB Group
under two different brandnames. The third, Mohammedan Sporting gets a
part sponsorship-money for its jerseys-from UB. Mahindras continue to
put their strength behind the renamed Mahindra United. In Goa, Zee Television
sponsors Churchill Brothers, Vasco is supported by the Chowgules and Salgaonkar
is owned by industrialist Shivanand Salgaonkar. Up north, JCT Phagwara
is considered a nursery for Punjab's soccer talent. Other top Indian clubs
which play at the very top of the 12-team National Football League (NFL)
are Manaksia Tollygunge Agragami, which has grown from being a traditional
neighbourhood "para" club bankrolled by a local businessman,
and India's first fully professional club FC Kochi. There are a handful
of clubs fielded by public-sector companies which feature in the 12-team
NFL-ITI, Bangalore, Air-India and the State Bank of Travancore-but their
spending capacity and with it, success remain constrained by government
regulations.
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It is the
clubs enjoying corporate patronage that prosper, and football attracts
funding for reasons pragmatic and philanthropic. Ashwin Malik, executive
vice-president, Marketing, McDowells, speaking for the UB Group's involvement,
says, "There are advantages of sponsoring football as it has a mass
appeal. The right kind of investment and brand association at an early
stage reaps long-term benefits."
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ANAND
MAHINDRA
MAHINDRA UTD
UNITED THEY STAND: The cricket and hockey divisions have shut down
but Mahindras' football club enters its 44th year under a new name,
Mahindra United. |
JCT's Sameer
Thapar says he has more than one reason: "With privately run companies
and clubs like ours the reasons are twofold-first a love for the sport
because otherwise it is difficult to justify spending money in a sport
where the exposure is not good, or rather not as good as it can be. Then
there is the question of the mileage you get from the sport-people now
know JCT as a football team rather than a textile company."
Mahindra
& Mahindra concentrate solely on football, believing the company's
products and the game's image go hand in hand. "Football is a tough
man's game-it goes well with our products, jeeps and tractors," says
former captain, coach and now manager of Mahindra United, Harish Rao.
The Chowgules
put in their money into two levels of the game: Vasco competes in the
NFL while the other Chowgule-funded outfit Salcete Football Club plays
in the Goa league. Vijay
Chowgule of the Chowgule Group says, "Our basic aim in sponsoring
football in Goa is to nurture the young talents of the state."
The big
boom began in the late 1990s with the advent of the first NFL sponsored
by Philips and broadcast on Star TV. When the UB Group turned its attention
to Kolkata's Big Three, players' salaries and club budgets went through
the roof. In 1998, the Indian
team's former captain I.M. Vijayan received an annual pay cheque of around
Rs 28 lakh from FC Kochi. Star striker Baichung Bhutia got Rs 25 lakh
a year and Nigeria's Cheema Okerie, a popular overseas player on Indian
grounds, Rs 30 lakh. In its first year, FC Kochi received a sponsorship
of Rs 1crore from the UB Group, a season later in 1998-99 Mallya's whopping
budget for East Bengal and Mohun Bagan topped Rs 2.76 crore.
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SUBHASH
CHANDRA ZEE Churchill
NEW FOCUS: The latest entrant in club soccer, Zee showed interest
in another Kolkata club, Tollygunge, and threw its lot in with the
big business-backed Indian Premier Football Association. |
There has
been a distinct downward trend ever since, brought about by a more realistic
assessment of the returns and talent on the ground. Today the most expensive
Indian player M. Najeeb of Mahindra United earns Rs 12 lakh a year, while
the most expensive overseas player is Brazilian Jose Barreto who could
cost Mohun Bagan up to Rs 20 lakh a year for a full season's play. In
the past five years, the cost of running a football club has risen fourfold:
it took Rs 35-50 lakh a year to run a club in 1996. All the major players
in club soccer-whether it is Zee Churchill, FC Kochi or Mahindra United-say
the bill today adds up to about Rs 2 crore. FC Kochi captain and striker
I.M. Vijayan's story is a typical rags to riches tale. He grew up in an
impoverished Kochi family which lived in a hut outside a football stadium.
Today, he is one of Indian football''s wealthiest players. Vijayan told
India Today, "Personally I would not have achieved what I have if
Mallya had not come to the scene to sponsor FC Kochi first and the Kolkata
clubs later."
The clubs
have their share of ups and downs. For FC Kochi, after the initial glorious
days of a flush of funds, has run up accumulated losses of Rs 3 crore.
After UB's Rs 1 crore pay cheque in the club's first year, Coca-Cola paid
out Rs 65 lakh in sponsorship in the club's second. In 1999, High Power
Batteries could only cough up Rs 50 lakh. UB's support to East Bengal
and Bagan dropped from Rs 2.45 crore in 1999-2000 to Rs 1.35 crore this
season.
Crores may still seem extraordinary sums of money for football in India
but clubs need more: prize money offered in most domestic events is negligible
except for the Rs 40 lakh jackpot from the NFL. Every club worth its weight
in hob-nailed boots tries to win the NFL and budgets are all directed
towards that effort. Each club can hire up to five overseas players, name
four in their first 16 but have no more than three on the field of play
at a time. Indian clubs send out representatives to Africa and the Gulf-Mahindra's
coach Shabbir Ali and manager Harish Rao have just returned from a scouting
mission in Iran-to look at affordable talent, and up to 40 per cent of
a club's budget is set aside for buying overseas players. Not only do
the clubs have to pay the transfer fee, the player's salary and perks
but also Rs 15,000 to the AIFF for every overseas player registered. With
sponsors proving hard to find, it is a financial tightrope that is getting
increasingly difficult to walk.
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