How Crowd-funding Is Shaking Up The Sports Ecosystem In India

Crowd-funding athletes is the new thing in Indian sports. 

What if there is someone in India more talented at playing Tennis than Sania Mirza or better at batting than Sachin Tendulkar? What if India has a football player as talented as Messi? What if the person sitting next to you is a potential Olympic athletics gold medalist? The truth is, in a country of 1.2 billion the chances of are indeed high.

The problem with Indian sports has never been about talent. It has always been about providing support and opportunities for the talent to be showcased. Anecdotally we all know of at least one young person who was very talented in a sport but quit playing post-high school or college. The reason for their quitting typically boils down to one key issue – money.

After a point, any sport requires investment – an athlete needs to spend money on training, equipment, diet, coaches and travel. In India barring the cricketers, very few athletes get to see this cash flow. Sponsors are few; prize money doesn’t exist, and Indian sports associations are mostly defunct and unable to help. This forces athletes to figure out ways to fund themselves. In most cases, they drop out.

The ideal solution is that the government and corporations collaborate to start channelizing funds into sports, both popular and not so popular. That is an ideal solution, but we live in a sports ecosystem that is far from ideal. We have known this reality of the sports ecosystem for years though most of us have done nothing much except indulge in armchair activism. Thankfully a small group of people decided it is time to stop lamenting about the state of affairs and have instead started doing something about it.

Their solution to empower India’s young athletes came from one critical insight – most Indians want to help, but most don’t know how to. The solution was simple – crowd funding – tell a compelling story about the athlete and his or her struggle. Then ask people to help via small donations that could snowball into significant amounts.

At the forefront of this crowdfunding initiative has been an Indian sports site called Sportskeeda. Sportskeeda is primarily a sports blogging site which covers close to 30 mainstream and a whole host of other indigenous sports.

While their primary aim is promotion of sports through words, Sportskeeda’s CEO Porush Jain feels crowd-funding was the next logical step. “Right from its inception, Sportskeeda has always been committed to the promotion of the lesser known sports, and making people aware that there are athletes outside cricket too who are sweating it out on the field. Helping athletes receive financial assistance was a natural corollary of that mission, and we’ve achieved a fair amount of success with crowdfunding in the past few years”, he says.

Sportskeeda works with organizations like Anglian Medal Hunt and Ketto to identify the athletes who need assistance. Post this Sportskeeda collects donations from its readers and deposits the same in a specially created trust fund. The donations are then transferred to a specific bank account, and all the proceeds go towards assisting the chosen athletes.

It was purely by chance that Sportskeeda stumbled upon this idea. The Ice Hockey Association of India (IHAI) came up with the idea of launching a crowdfunding drive on social media – they wanted to raise funds for the team to travel to Kuwait for a tournament. The association launched the #supporticehockey campaign with the aim of raising 7-8 lakhs. Their story was picked up by Sportskeeda, and the story then became viral.

The response was tremendous. Various corporate houses, adventure travel agencies, sports fans and even public figures such as Anand Mahindra, Chairman of the Mahindra Group and Cricketer Gautam Gambhir chipped in.

This proof of the concept helped Sportskeeda launch a full time crowdfunding initiative in partnership with GoSports Foundation. They are currently trying to support the following junior players:

– Ruthvika Shivani, Indian badminton player, ranked 2nd in India in U-17 girls category

– Supriya Mondal, Junior Indian swimmer, fastest junior Indian swimmer in 200m butterfly

– Niranjan Mukundan, Indian para-swimmer, ranked 17th in the world in 100m butterfly

While Sportskeeda is helping junior talent raise money, GiveforSports.org is helping NGOs that work in either professional athlete development or the sports for development sector (use sports as a tool for development) raise funds. After completing his master’s degree in sports business from New York University in 2011, Arup Soans got the idea for the venture during his travels across India. “Upon my return from the US, I did a fair bit of travel across India and met several founders of sports NGOs doing amazing work using sport as a developmental tool. The main issue that all these founders were facing was ability and knowhow to market their NGOs as well as the year on year having a funding deficit. This made me realize that there is a gap that can be filled and that’s what we have set out to achieve.”

Currently, GiveforSports.org is working with four partner NGOs – Slum Soccer (Nagpur), OSCAR Foundation (Mumbai), Rahee Foundation (Mumbai) and Shamali Bhalotia Golf Trust (Kolkata). They also work with an educational institution in Mumbai – the Wilson College.

Organisations like Sportskeeda and GiveforSports.org are finally shaking up the sports ecosystem which has so far been lying dormant or defunct. The fact that sports fans are willing to help out by parting with money means that somewhere they do feel a sense of belonging with the athletes and want to see them succeed.

India could be one step closer to being a good sporting nation if only our sports associations figured out ways to build on existing interest and enthusiasm for sports.