- Odisha has invested over ₹5,000 Cr in sports across infrastructure, sponsorship, and grassroots development — and produced measurable ROI: two FIH Hockey World Cups, India’s Olympic hockey bronze at Tokyo 2021, consecutive national hockey golds in 2024–25, and a 12th-place finish at the 2025 National Games — the state’s best ever.
- The newly elected Odisha government has committed ₹4,124 Cr over five years to build a multi-sport facility in each of its 314 administrative blocks — the most ambitious state-level grassroots infrastructure programme in Indian sports history.
- The Odisha model rests on four interlocking pillars: elite infrastructure at the top, a national team sponsorship strategy, aggressive international event hosting, and a deep grassroots pipeline — all sustained by political will over two decades.
- Every other state government in India can replicate this model. The blueprint is not proprietary. What requires courage is committing to sports as an economic investment rather than a welfare line item.
Table of Contents
- The State That Decided to Be Different
- Phase 1: The Hockey Bet — How Odisha Saved Indian Hockey
- Phase 2: Building World-Class Infrastructure, Twice
- Phase 3: The Grassroots Revolution — ₹4,124 Crore to Every Block
- Measuring the ROI: What Odisha Got Back for Its Investment
- The Four Pillars of the Odisha Model — Decoded
- The Hard Truths: Where the Model Still Has Gaps
- The Blueprint: What Every State Government Should Take From Odisha
- FAQ: The Odisha Sports Development Model
- The Model Exists. The Question Is Who Follows It.
The State That Decided to Be Different {#different}
In 2008, Indian hockey hit its lowest point. The national men’s team failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics — the first time in the sport’s history that India, an eight-time Olympic gold medallist, would not compete at the Games. Sahara India, the team’s primary sponsor, eventually withdrew its financial support. Hockey India was left searching for a partner willing to bet on a sport the country had seemingly abandoned.
The partner that raised its hand was not a global corporation or a wealthy franchise owner. It was the government of Odisha — a state in eastern India, population 4.5 crore, with no particular claim to being a sports powerhouse at the time. The then chief minister Naveen Patnaik, who had played hockey as a student at the Doon School, saw an opportunity that the rest of India had missed: a national sport at its lowest ebb, available for a state government to step in, build a relationship, and reap the rewards of a long-term partnership when — not if — the sport recovered.
That decision, taken without a detailed ROI model or a certainty of return, became the founding act of what is now India’s most sophisticated state sports development strategy. What followed over the next fifteen years was not a single bold gesture but a sustained, compounding sequence of investments — each one building on the last — that have transformed Odisha from a sports-silent state into India’s most recognised sports destination.
This blog is a forensic analysis of how that happened. Not to celebrate Odisha for its own sake, but because the blueprint is replicable — and right now, in a moment when India is targeting the 2036 Olympics and every state government is searching for economic growth stories, the Odisha model is the most compelling playbook available.
Phase 1: The Hockey Bet — How Odisha Saved Indian Hockey {#phase1}
The first phase of Odisha’s sports strategy was rooted in a single sport: hockey. The decision was not purely sentimental. Odisha has a deep tribal hockey heritage — former India captain Dilip Tirkey is an Odia, and the tribal regions of the state have historically produced hockey talent at the grassroots level. The sport had cultural roots in the state long before the government chose to invest in it formally.
In 2018, Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) signed a ₹120 Cr deal with Hockey India to become the official sponsor of both the men’s and women’s national hockey teams — senior and junior. The timing was deliberate. India’s hockey programme had lost its anchor sponsor, the sport had low commercial visibility, and the cost of entry was far lower than it would have been for cricket, football, or any other sport with existing corporate competition for sponsorship.
This is one of the most important strategic lessons of the Odisha model: enter when the cost is low, the need is high, and the upside is unpriced. In 2018, nobody was paying ₹120 Cr to sponsor Indian hockey. Within five years, that investment had yielded India’s first Olympic hockey medal in 41 years, back-to-back World Cup hosting rights, and a brand identity for Odisha as India’s hockey capital that money alone cannot buy.
When the initial five-year deal expired, Odisha extended the sponsorship for a further ten years — through 2033. The renewed deal added the Kho Kho national team to the portfolio: a ₹15 Cr, three-year arrangement signed in January 2025, funded through OMC. The pattern is consistent: identify sports with strong grassroots alignment in Odisha, sponsor their national teams, host their world-class events, and build facilities that outlast the events themselves.
Phase 2: Building World-Class Infrastructure, Twice {#phase2}
The second phase was infrastructure — and it is where Odisha separated itself from every other state government in India with sporting ambitions.
When Odisha hosted the FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup in 2018, it invested ₹66.98 Cr in the Kalinga Stadium upgrades: new turfs, expanded capacity to 15,000, improved galleries, and an international-standard playing surface. By the standards of Indian state sports investment at the time, this was significant. The 2018 World Cup was a success. India performed well, Bhubaneswar established itself as a credible international sports city, and Odisha’s brand as a sports host was planted.
But it was the 2023 decision that announced Odisha’s genuine ambition. When Odisha won the right to host the FIH Hockey World Cup a second time — the first nation to do so consecutively — the government chose not to simply upgrade existing facilities. It built an entirely new stadium.
The Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium in Rourkela, named after the revered tribal leader, was constructed at a cost of ₹875 Cr for the stadium alone, with the total 2023 World Cup investment reaching approximately ₹1,098 Cr. With a seating capacity of 20,000, it became India’s largest hockey stadium. The choice of Rourkela — a steel city in the tribal heartland of Odisha — was not administrative convenience. It was a deliberate act of geographic inclusion: building world-class infrastructure not in the capital, not in the most commercially visible location, but in the region whose communities have historically produced hockey talent and deserved to see it celebrated at home.
This decision carries a lesson that every state government considering sports investment should study closely. Infrastructure placed in high-profile metros generates visibility but limited talent development impact. Infrastructure placed in districts with genuine sporting culture generates both visibility and a generational pipeline of athletes who can see themselves in world-class facilities built for people like them.
The total investment in physical infrastructure across Odisha’s sports development journey now exceeds ₹2,000 Cr in elite-level facilities alone — the Kalinga Stadium multi-sport complex (indoor athletics, aquatics, diving, tennis, and a Sports Science Centre were all added), the Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium, 21 new hockey training centres across the state, and the Odisha Naval Tata Hockey High-Performance Centre at Kalinga (set up in collaboration with the Tata Group in 2018, with 12 grassroots centres training over 2,500 young players).
Phase 3: The Grassroots Revolution — ₹4,124 Crore to Every Block {#phase3}
If Phase 1 was the bet and Phase 2 was the visible payoff, Phase 3 is where the Odisha model becomes genuinely transformational — and genuinely replicable for every state in India.
In 2025, the Odisha government announced what may be the most ambitious state-level grassroots sports infrastructure programme in Indian history: a ₹4,124 Cr, five-year plan to build a multi-sport facility in each of Odisha’s 314 administrative blocks. Each facility is designed as a holistic complex — a 400-metre athletic track, a football ground, two badminton courts, and an indoor hall. The per-block allocation is ₹14.5 Cr for development, upgrade, and maintenance.
The stated objective is explicit and correct: to demolish the geographic concentration of sports development that has historically meant only athletes from Bhubaneswar or Rourkela could access quality infrastructure. As one of the young Odia athletes who benefited from the state’s programme put it: “Earlier, opportunities were mostly limited to athletes from big cities or elite academies. Now, athletes from small towns and villages have a real chance to compete at the highest level.”
This is the Panchayat-to-Podium model in its most ambitious form. The phrase — coined to describe Odisha’s approach — captures the philosophy: sport development must begin at the village level, not at the national team. Talent identification cannot be trusted to periodic government talent hunts if there is nowhere in the athlete’s home block to develop after identification. The ₹4,124 Cr programme is the infrastructure answer to the grassroots pipeline problem that India’s sports sector has never adequately solved at state level.
The programme also connects directly to the CM Trophy, Odisha’s flagship new grassroots competition — a district-level multi-sport tournament designed to create a competitive pathway from block facilities to state competition to national programmes. Without a competition calendar attached to new infrastructure, facilities become under-utilised. The CM Trophy is the demand-creation mechanism that justifies the infrastructure supply.
Odisha’s sports budget in FY 2025-26 was ₹1,320 Cr — of which ₹943 Cr was allocated specifically for sports development and management. For a state with a total budget of ₹2,90,000 Cr, this represents roughly 0.45% of total public expenditure devoted entirely to sport. That ratio, sustained over years, is the financial backbone of everything described in this blog.
Measuring the ROI: What Odisha Got Back for Its Investment {#roi}
The sceptical question any government must answer before committing serious money to sports is: what do we get back? Odisha’s experience provides the clearest available answer to that question from within India.
Athletic Results: The most visible ROI is competitive performance. At the 2025 National Games, Odisha finished 12th in the overall medal tally — its best ever — with 14 gold, 15 silver, and 17 bronze medals across disciplines (Outlook Business, 2025). In athletics, Odia sprinters swept the men’s 100m, 200m, 400m, and 4x100m relay. In August 2025, Odisha hosted India’s first-ever World Athletics Bronze Level Continental Tour. Twelve Odia players currently represent India in hockey internationally. A youth Asian record in weightlifting, a first-ever national gold in gymnastics, a first national gold in swimming — the breadth of sports in which Odisha is now competitive is the direct product of the multi-sport approach.
The Hockey Dividend: India’s Olympic hockey bronze at Tokyo 2021 — the country’s first Olympic hockey medal in 41 years — was explicitly acknowledged by India captain Manpreet Singh as connected to Odisha’s sponsorship, infrastructure, and the Kalinga Stadium training environment. India’s Paris 2024 bronze followed. Two consecutive Olympic medals in a sport that had been commercially abandoned before Odisha stepped in represents an ROI that cannot be expressed purely in financial terms but has enormous brand and diplomatic value for the state.
International Event Hosting: Odisha has hosted over 30 national and international sporting events since 2017 — from FIH Pro League fixtures to the Asian Athletics Championships (2017, assembled in 90 days), BWF Odisha Masters, ISL matches, and two Hockey World Cups. Each event generates direct economic activity — tourism, hospitality, media coverage, merchandise — as well as the intangible infrastructure of sports tourism credibility that attracts future events.
Brand and Economic Identity: The clearest non-sporting ROI is Odisha’s transformation as a brand. Before 2017, Odisha was not associated with sports in any national conversation. By 2025, it is described by Hockey India, FIH, and Athletics India as India’s premier sports hosting destination. Bhubaneswar’s Kalinga Stadium is mentioned in the same breath as world-class global sports facilities. This brand equity has spillover effects in tourism, investment attraction, and state pride that compound over time.
| Investment Phase | Approx. Spend | Key Output | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hockey team sponsorship (2018–23) | ₹120 Cr | Tokyo 2021 + Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medals | Completed |
| Hockey World Cup 2018 | ₹67 Cr | International hosting, Kalinga Stadium upgrade | Completed |
| Hockey World Cup 2023 + Birsa Munda Stadium | ₹1,098 Cr | India’s largest hockey stadium, second hosting | Completed |
| Odisha Naval Tata Hockey HPC | Est. ₹50 Cr | 12 grassroots centres, 2,500+ young trainees | Active |
| 21 Hockey Training Centres | Est. ₹150 Cr | State-wide hockey development infrastructure | Active |
| Hockey sponsorship extension (2023–33) | ₹150 Cr+ | Continued national team partnership | Active |
| Kho Kho team sponsorship (2025–27) | ₹15 Cr | Multi-sport expansion strategy | Active |
| ₹4,124 Cr Block Infrastructure Programme | ₹4,124 Cr | 314 block-level multi-sport facilities | In progress |
| Annual sports budget FY2025-26 | ₹1,320 Cr | Operations, programmes, competition | Annual |
| Cumulative Investment (est.) | ₹5,000 Cr+ | India’s leading sports state | Ongoing |
The Four Pillars of the Odisha Model — Decoded {#pillars}
Stripped to its architecture, the Odisha sports development model rests on four interlocking pillars. Any state government attempting to replicate it needs all four — partial adoption produces diluted outcomes.
Pillar 1: Elite Infrastructure That Sets a New Standard
Odisha did not build good-enough facilities. It built world-class ones — facilities that FIH, World Athletics, and international federations are willing to give their marquee events to. The Birsa Munda Stadium is not just good for India; it is one of the finest hockey venues in the world. The Kalinga Stadium complex, with its aquatic centre, athletics track, sports science facility, and high-performance centre, rivals any state sports complex in Asia.
The lesson is counterintuitive: when committing to sports infrastructure, the temptation is to build modestly and spread widely. Odisha’s experience suggests the reverse — build one or two facilities to a genuinely international standard, use them to attract global events, and use those events to justify and fund the next phase. A second-tier facility will never host a World Cup. A World Cup-standard facility will pay for itself many times over.
Pillar 2: National Team Sponsorship as Soft Power
Sponsoring the Indian national hockey team cost Odisha ₹120 Cr over five years. In return, the state’s name appeared on the jerseys of India’s most historically significant sport, on the broadcast of every international hockey match India played for five years, and in the acknowledgements of every Olympic medal won during that period. No amount of conventional advertising could buy that exposure.
More importantly, the sponsorship created institutional relationships — with Hockey India, with FIH, with athletes, with media — that made the 2023 World Cup hosting, the extended deal, and the Kho Kho expansion all natural next steps. The sponsorship was not just marketing. It was relationship infrastructure.
Pillar 3: Aggressive International Event Hosting
Odisha treated every international event bid not as a vanity project but as a strategic acquisition. The 2017 Asian Athletics Championships was won and delivered in 90 days — demonstrating operational competence that unlocked trust for every event that followed. The World Cup bids were won on the strength of that track record. The World Athletics Continental Tour followed.
Each event is more than its immediate economic impact. It is a training exercise for the state’s sports administration, a showcase for its facilities, and a proof point that earns the next bid. Odisha has created a compounding portfolio of hosting credibility that no other state in India can yet match.
Pillar 4: Grassroots Infrastructure That Builds a Genuine Pipeline
The elite end of the model — world-class facilities, international events, national team sponsorships — generates brand and inspiration. But without the grassroots end, it produces no athletes. Odisha understood this relatively early. The Odisha Naval Tata Hockey HPC with its 12 grassroots centres, the 21 hockey training centres across the state, and now the ₹4,124 Cr block infrastructure programme represent the demand-side of the talent pipeline. You cannot identify talent that has nowhere to develop after identification. The infrastructure that now exists across Odisha’s 314 blocks is the answer to that problem at the state level.
This is exactly the logic that drives GSK’s academy and grassroots development work — and it is the same logic behind the Chhattisgarh Hockey League 2026’s zonal talent hunt across all 33 districts. Infrastructure, talent pathway, and competition calendar must be designed together, not sequenced. Odisha figured this out over 15 years of iteration. The blueprint is now available for other states to adopt from the start.
The Hard Truths: Where the Model Still Has Gaps {#gaps}
A balanced analysis of the Odisha model must acknowledge its limitations — not to diminish the achievement, but because any state attempting to replicate it will face the same gaps and should plan for them.
The Hockey-Centric Dependency (Early Phase): For most of its development journey, Odisha’s sports identity was synonymous with hockey. As recently as 2018, despite being the national team’s sponsor and the host of a World Cup, Odisha had no player in the Indian squad — a contradiction that provoked genuine public criticism. Sports investment, even at significant scale, does not automatically produce elite international athletes. The pathway from infrastructure to international representation takes a generation. Odisha’s more recent results — in athletics, gymnastics, swimming, and kho kho — reflect investments made years earlier, and the state is now visibly multi-sport. But it took time, and the early criticism was fair.
The Urban-Rural Infrastructure Gap: Despite the ambition of the ₹4,124 Cr block programme, significant quality disparities remain between Bhubaneswar and Rourkela’s world-class facilities and the infrastructure in smaller districts. Building facilities is the first step; ensuring they are staffed with qualified coaches, maintained to a functional standard, and linked to a competition calendar is the harder, more persistent challenge. The Odisha model has been stronger on infrastructure creation than on sustained infrastructure utilisation — a gap that the current government’s CM Trophy initiative is designed to close.
The Sponsorship vs. Ecosystem Gap: Sponsoring national teams creates visibility and national relationships, but it is not the same as developing state talent. The 12 Odia players currently in national hockey squads — the largest contingent from any single state — are a genuine achievement. But they emerged from the Odisha Naval Tata HPC and the grassroots centres, not from the jersey sponsorship. The model works when all four pillars are active simultaneously. States that adopt only the sponsorship element without the infrastructure and grassroots pillars will see marketing returns but not talent development returns.
The Blueprint: What Every State Government Should Take From Odisha {#blueprint}
The Odisha model is not about hockey, and it is not about Odisha. It is about the decision framework and the implementation architecture that any state government can apply to any sport — or to a portfolio of sports — with the realistic expectation of compounding returns over a 10–15 year horizon.
Here is the actionable blueprint, decoded for any state:
Step 1: Choose Your Anchor Sport Strategically. Odisha chose hockey because it had grassroots tribal heritage in the sport, the national team needed a sponsor when no one else was willing, and the entry cost was low. Every state has an equivalent — a sport with authentic local roots, an undersponsored national team or federation, and low commercial competition. For Chhattisgarh, it is hockey for precisely the same cultural reasons. For Kerala, it is football. For Haryana, it is wrestling. The key is choosing based on genuine cultural alignment, not political optics.
Step 2: Invest in Infrastructure to International Standards, Not Minimum Viable. The Kalinga and Birsa Munda stadiums were not built to satisfy domestic demand. They were built to international specifications that made them credible hosts for global events. The investment threshold must be set with the international event hosting objective in mind. Undershooting the standard means the facilities never attract the events that generate the returns. This is where sports infrastructure consulting — from detailed project reports to international compliance auditing — is the difference between a facility that gets built and a facility that works.
Step 3: Bid Aggressively for International Events. Events are not vanity. They are the mechanism through which infrastructure investment pays back — through tourism revenue, international media exposure, sports tourism development, and the cascade of smaller events that follow a successful marquee hosting. A state that builds a world-class athletics track and never bids for a competition has built an asset without a monetisation strategy. Odisha’s 2017 Asian Athletics Championship hosting — assembled in 90 days — was the proof of competence that unlocked every event bid that followed.
Step 4: Sponsor National Teams in Your Anchor Sports. State government sponsorship of national teams is underused in India despite Odisha’s proof of concept. A ₹15–25 Cr annual investment in a national team sponsorship generates brand exposure that no state government advertising budget can replicate. It builds institutional relationships with federations and creates a platform for athlete development programmes. The ROI is long-term but compounding. The sponsorship and media rights expertise to structure and negotiate these deals is available — what has been missing is the political will to treat sport as brand infrastructure rather than welfare.
Step 5: Design the Grassroots Pipeline from Day One. Odisha’s biggest learning is that elite results take a generation. The athletes winning medals at the 2025 National Games began their development pathways in 2012–2016. The ₹4,124 Cr block infrastructure programme will produce its first elite-level outcomes in 2030–2035 — perfectly timed for India’s 2036 Olympic hosting bid. Any state starting this journey now must design its grassroots pipeline in parallel with its elite infrastructure, not as a follow-on phase. The academy development work that connects district-level infrastructure to a structured training and competition pathway is what turns facilities into athletes.
Step 6: Sustain Investment Over Political Cycles. This is the most honest and most difficult element of the blueprint. Odisha’s model worked because two successive governments — and two successive political eras — maintained the investment direction. Sports development returns appear on a 10–15 year timeline. Political cycles in India are 5 years. Any state that starts a sports development programme and discontinues it after one election cycle will see sunk infrastructure costs without the compounding returns that only continuity produces. Institutionalising sports investment through dedicated sports corporations, multi-year budget commitments, and independent sports development authorities — rather than direct ministerial discretion — is the governance architecture that makes continuity possible.
This is precisely the kind of integrated planning, consulting, and implementation support that GSK’s infrastructure and ecosystem services are designed to provide — from DPR preparation and feasibility studies to event management, sports marketing, and analytics that allow state governments to measure and report the ROI of their investment across the full cycle.
FAQ: The Odisha Sports Development Model {#faq}
Q: How much has Odisha spent on sports in total, and is this the right amount for a state of its size?
Odisha’s cumulative sports investment is estimated at over ₹5,000 Cr across infrastructure, national team sponsorship, event hosting, and the ongoing ₹4,124 Cr block programme. In its FY2025-26 budget, Odisha allocated ₹1,320 Cr to sports — approximately 0.45% of its total state budget of ₹2,90,000 Cr. Whether this is the “right” amount is less important than whether it is sustained, strategically deployed, and connected to a measurable outcomes framework. Odisha’s experience suggests that ₹1,000-1,500 Cr per year, compounding over 10-15 years, is sufficient to produce transformational results for a state of its size. A smaller state might achieve similar impact with ₹400-600 Cr annually, if deployed with the same architectural discipline.
Q: Why did Odisha choose hockey over cricket, football, or other sports?
The decision reflected authentic alignment between the state’s cultural heritage, the sport’s commercial vulnerability at the time, and the entry cost available. Odisha has deep tribal hockey traditions — former India captain Dilip Tirkey is an Odia, and the tribal regions of the state have historically produced hockey players. When Sahara withdrew from Indian hockey sponsorship, the cost of entry was dramatically lower than any other visible sport in India. Odisha stepped in when nobody else would, establishing a relationship with Hockey India and FIH that no amount of money could have purchased in a competitive bidding environment. The lesson is strategic timing, not hockey specifically.
Q: What is the Odisha Naval Tata Hockey High-Performance Centre?
Set up in 2018 in collaboration with the Tata Group at the Kalinga Stadium complex in Bhubaneswar, the Odisha Naval Tata Hockey High-Performance Centre is a residential training facility for emerging hockey talent. It operates 12 grassroots training centres across the state, training over 2,500 young players. The HPC model — world-class coaching and science in a residential environment, fed by grassroots district centres — is a miniature version of the full Odisha blueprint applied specifically to hockey. It is directly responsible for the increase in Odia players in national squads.
Q: Can smaller states with limited budgets apply the Odisha model?
Yes — with adaptation. The Odisha model is scalable because its core logic (choose a culturally aligned sport, build to international standards, host events, sponsor national teams, invest in grassroots) is not budget-dependent. A smaller state can apply the same framework to a single district rather than the entire state, to a single sport, and to a single world-class facility rather than two. The Chhattisgarh Hockey League 2026 is an example of a smaller-scale application of exactly this logic: choosing hockey for cultural reasons, building a professional league with franchise economics, and embedding a 33-district talent hunt as the grassroots component.
Q: How does India’s 2036 Olympics bid connect to the Odisha model?
Odisha’s sports infrastructure and hosting track record is a core component of India’s 2036 Olympic bid architecture. Bhubaneswar and Rourkela are expected to be candidate venues for hockey and athletics events. The ₹4,124 Cr block infrastructure programme, timed to produce its first major talent cohort by 2033–2035, is explicitly designed to ensure Odisha contributes meaningfully to the Olympic squad — not just as a venue, but as a talent source. The state’s vision document for 2047 explicitly lists “positioning Odisha as a leading sports destination” as a strategic pillar of its broader economic development plan.
Q: What does the Odisha model tell us about the role of private sector partners in state sports development?
Odisha’s model is predominantly government-led but strategically private-sector-enabled. The Odisha Naval Tata Hockey HPC is a public-private partnership. The franchise sports model — with Hockey India League’s Kalinga Lancers — brought private franchise capital into the ecosystem. The ₹4,124 Cr block infrastructure programme is government-funded but creates demand for private coaching, sports technology, equipment, and event management. The relationship between state investment and private ecosystem activation is symbiotic: government investment creates the enabling environment; private sector partners — sports management companies, analytics providers, sponsorship consultants — make it commercially sustainable and professionally managed.
The Model Exists. The Question Is Who Follows It. {#conclusion}
Odisha’s journey from a state with no sporting identity to India’s most recognised sports destination did not happen by accident. It happened because a government made a series of deliberate, disciplined, long-term investments — in infrastructure that was genuinely world-class, in national teams that needed support at precisely the right moment, in international events that built global credibility, and in grassroots pipelines that are only now beginning to produce their full yield.
The Odisha sports development model is not a secret. Its investments have been publicly documented, its outcomes are visible on national scoreboards and Olympic podiums, and its logic is straightforward: treat sport as an economic development tool, not a welfare activity, and invest accordingly. The ROI is long-term, but it is real and it is compounding.
What the model requires is not money alone. States with far larger budgets than Odisha have produced far smaller results because the investment was fragmented, politically motivated, and discontinued when administrations changed. What Odisha had — and what the blueprint requires above all else — is institutional patience: the willingness to invest before the return is visible, to maintain direction through political cycles, and to build infrastructure for a generation rather than a news cycle.
India has 28 states and 8 union territories. Each one has a sport with authentic cultural roots, underserved talent, and the infrastructure deficit that Odisha identified as an opportunity in 2008. Each one has the potential to become the next Odisha — in hockey, or football, or kabaddi, or wrestling, or badminton — if the political will and the strategic architecture align.
At GSK, this is exactly the kind of ecosystem thinking we bring to state government partnerships. From sports infrastructure consulting that turns political ambition into viable Detailed Project Reports, to events and tournament management that builds the competition calendar essential to infrastructure ROI, to sponsorship strategy that connects state investment to national brand visibility — the full toolkit for replicating the Odisha model is available. The Chhattisgarh Hockey League 2026 is GSK’s own version of what a state-level sports investment blueprint looks like when all the pillars are engaged simultaneously.
Odisha showed India what is possible. The question now is which state has the ambition — and the strategic architecture — to be next.