Sponsorship of distance running events outpaces MYAS support for NSFs

An indication of the magnitude of public influence, mostly unseen but nearly always felt, on sports sponsorship decisions can be seen from how the distance running events in India have been able to attract the attention of brand managers of diverse corporates. With many cities and town hosting their own flagship marathon or half marathon events, this industry is burgeoning, indeed.

Sporting Nation: Building A Legacy, GroupM’s India Sports Sponsorship Report 2024, offers a very captivating insight into the nation’s sports industry.  Of Rs. 1811 crore spent by sponsors on ‘Emerging Sport’, distance running accounted for as must as 23.5 per cent (nearly Rs. 426 crore). It represents a healthy 5.73 per cent  of total sports sponsorship spends of Rs. 7421 crore. 

The total includes sponsorship of events and teams as well as franchise fee, but distance running does not entail either team sponsorship of franchise fee. The GroupM report has calculated that the Indian sports industry grew in 2024 by 6 per cent to Rs. 16633 crore in comparison with the figures of the previous year, with endorsements rising by a whopping 32 per cent.

Juxtaposing these numbers with the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports’ assistance to National Sports Federations makes it more interesting. Even if it may be an unfair comparison, is bound to spark some thoughts on the financial state of the National Sports Federations of Olympic sport in India as well as their dependency on Government support. 

As per the then Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports Anurag Thakur’s reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on August 3, 2023, the assistance provided by the Ministry to 69 National Sports Federations and other institutions over four years from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2023, was Rs 441.45 crore, just a shade more than the sponsorship spends on distance running in a year.

Let’s take a look at the of the top 10 Federations on this list. The National Rifle Association of India secured the highest funding in this period, totaling Rs. 50.72 crore, ahead of the All India Football Federation (Rs. 38.89 crore), Boxing Federation of India (Rs. 36.30 crore), Hockey India (Rs 33.72 crore) and Badminton Association of India (Rs 29.06 crore).

Athletics Federation of India (Rs 25.74 crore), Paralympic Committee of India (Rs 22.15 crore), Indian Weightlifting Federation (Rs. 19.27 crore), Wrestling Federation of India (Rs. 16.12 crore) and Table Tennis Federation of India (Rs 13.90 crore) complete the list of the top 10 Federations and institutions getting financial assistance from the Ministry over the four-year period.

For all that, most National Sports Federations would love to have access to such sponsorship monies, struggling as they are to raise decent amounts to organise their National Championships at the senior and age-group levels, let alone to conduct camps for the elite athletes to prepare for international competitions.

With spectator patronage virtually non-existent in most domestic sport, it is no surprise that there are few takers among broadcasters for national-level events in Emerging Sport, as Group M brands non-cricket disciplines, most National Sports Federations find it tough to raise resources to complete their calendar.

It would make for fascinating research on why brand managers pump in so much money into distance running events whose broadcast and online streaming do not seem to have great following. Distance running appears to buck the long-held belief that sponsors look for events that draw eyeballs to television and, more recently, digital platforms.

There can be no questioning the sponsors’ collective wisdom in investing nearly as much in distance running in one year as the Ministry’s assistance to National Sports Federations across four years. On the contrary, such staggering numbers being spent on what is a more recreational than competitive sport should make many a National Sports Federations put their thinking caps on.

To their credit, over the past few years, some have sought to innovate and draw broadcasters and sponsors to their sport. Kabaddi, which got less than a crore of rupees from the Ministry in the four-year period, Hockey, Wrestling, Badminton, Boxing Table Tennis and Football have their own franchise-based sport, but not all of them have produced long-term results.

Even though Hockey India has a Rs. 86.69 crore income in 2022-23, making it one of the highest earning National Sports Federations in the country, it had to depend on Government to have the National Camps for the men and women’s teams in the Sports Authority of India Southern Centre in Bengaluru. If this were true of Hockey, the state of other disciplines can well be imagined.

Even if the industry has invested nearly Rs 1400 crore in ground sponsorships, team sponsorships and franchise fee in Emerging Sport beyond distance running, there is no doubt that the marketing teams in the National Sports Federation will have to understand and persuade the Indian sports sponsorship ecosystem to invest in Olympic sport a lot more than it appears to be at the moment.