Soccer, the alternative religion

In India, most people seem to be talking about the FIFA soccer world cup 2014. Television sets have become indoor stadiums for those who cannot go all the way to Brazil. Newspapers are giving the event saturation coverage. Shops are prominently displaying soccer merchandise in a coveted space that belonged to the cricket league, IPL, till last month.

But all this action happens in a country that ranks a lowly 154th in the global FIFA rankings. That’s lower than the 145th position that India occupied just in April 2014 and way below the 131st rank that has been the country’s average since the creation of the FIFA rankings in end-1992. There is no shortage of people who lament that a country of more than a billion people cannot produce a decent soccer team. So what will it take India, a country that considers cricket as religion, to also warm up to football as a part of its sporting ritual?

India’s major marketers believe that it’s a now-or-never moment to promote soccer and give the sport its due on Indian soil. Indranil Das Blah, COO of talent and sports management company CAA-Kwan, says, "This is a great time to market soccer in the country as the interest levels in the game have increased in the past decade. If a brand needs to reach out to the young urban youth aged 14-30 years, football is a great platform. Cricket is expensive and also cluttered.”

But to make that happen, soccer has to be an integral part of the culture. “It’s very important to understand the consumer in their cultural context. Till the time you don’t have a strong hook that you can embed in the culture of the country, you cannot create a fantastic proposition on a one-one basis,” says Bhavesh Somaya, marketing and innovation director, Diageo India. Agreeing with that assessment is Debabrata Mukherjee, vice-president, marketing and commercial, Coca-Cola India. “The main focus should be to create a culture of football,” he says. That would include the overall development of football from several perspectives such as creation of fan bases, fan experiences, multiple opportunities for young footballers, international exposure, a strong support system for the football federation, a supportive government and corporates that are willing to invest in football.

Rituraj Bhattacharya, head, product development and market management, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance says, “More and more initiatives need to be taken for school-level and football academy-level tournaments, mainly to infuse the culture of the game.” He cites the example of the Bajaj Allianz Junior Football Camp. Introduced in 2010, the annual camp is choosing the best football talent right from the schools in small towns and gives the best lot an opportunity to get trained at German club, FC Bayern Munich. “Good talent will not emerge till there is investment in grassroots talent and this is where the industry, government, sports associations, former sportsmen – all have to come together and encourage sports," agrees Coca-Cola’s Mukherjee.

Somaya suggests that social media offers marketers a very big opportunity to create a cultural context for soccer in India. But there need to be certain safeguards. “The digital engagement should not be in service of the brand. It should be in service of the consumer. Once you do that you create a space in the consumer’s life and then bring them in,” he says. Blah adds that besides developing local infrastructure and action-packed leagues, what the country also needs is development and promotion of local soccer icons, which can connect with the youth. Others like Bhattacharya say that “an important initiative will be to attract reputed foreign players to play in clubs and part of domestic games”. The under-17 soccer world cup that India will host in 2017 will hopefully be the catalyst for that.

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