12/21/24
November 29, 2014
New India Super League Has Fourth-Highest Attendance in Soccer: The India Super League began a month ago, hoping to bring soccer to prominence in a country where it was once the most popular sport. The league has brought on some older foreign stars -- Alessandro Del Piero, Robert Pires, Freddie Ljungberg, Nicolas Anelka and David Trezeguet -- and drew 56 million viewers to its opening matches. The league has eight teams, plays three months and does not relegate, although it plans a merger with the smaller, established I-League within five years. Organizers tout that it has the fourth-highest attendance of any league, ahead of Serie A and behind the Bundesliga, Premier League and La Liga. In a country of 1.2 billion, there are a lot of potential eyeballs. "Even a niche does very well for numbers," said Siddhanth Aney, editor of Sports Illustrated India. "You only need 1 percent of the TV audience to be successful."
During the Winter Olympics there was an Indian athlete in the luge and he had to wear an Olympic flag instead of his own because of a ban. He finished 37th out of 39 and was, to quote the link, the country's "top winter sports athlete."
Watching him compete like a lovable underdog Jamaican bobsledder, I found it hard to believe a country as populous as India could put such a low priority on Olympic success.
posted by rcade at 07:41 PM on November 30, 2014
The Indian [and Chinese] sports markets are the future, and I'm surprised it took this long for someone to try and capitalize on it.
Like they said, 1% share is still over 100million, so it might be worth it to try.