From Disability to the Podium: Why Para Sports Is India’s Most Underinvested Sports Category
Key Highlights Table of Contents The Athletic Achievement That Deserves Commercial Respect Let’s begin with the numbers, because they are extraordinary. At the Rio 2016 Paralympics, India won 4 medals. Nineteen athletes competed. The nation’s Paralympic presence was modest, its commercial attention minimal, and its public profile close to zero outside the circle of para […]
Adventure Sports in India: The ₹500 Crore Sponsorship Category Brands Are Sleeping On
Key Highlight Table of Contents What We Mean by “Adventure Sports Sponsorship” and Why the Definition Matters Before the data, a definitional point — because the term “adventure sports” in India carries two very different commercial meanings, and conflating them is how brands end up making the wrong bet. The first meaning is adventure tourism: […]
The Scheduled Tribe Athlete Development Gap: Why India’s Biggest Talent Pool Has the Worst Infrastructure
Key Highlights Table of Contents The Demographic Context: Who India’s Tribal Athletes Are {#demographic-context} India’s Scheduled Tribes are constitutionally defined as indigenous communities sharing five characteristics identified by the Lokur Committee in 1965: primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, limited contact with the mainstream, and economic backwardness. There are approximately 705 ethnic groups notified as […]
India’s 15-to-29 Demographic Is the World’s Biggest Sports Opportunity Nobody Has a Plan for It
Key Highlights Table of Contents The Demographic Arithmetic Nobody Has Fully Reckoned With Start with the numbers, because they require a moment to absorb. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2022–23, people aged 15 to 29 account for 26.6% of India’s population. India’s population in 2026 is approximately 1.476 billion. That puts the 15–29 […]
Dream11’s Secret Weapon: How Fantasy Sports Data Is Reshaping Indian Sports Sponsorship
Key Highlight Table of Contents The Data Engine: What Dream11 Actually Built Over 15 Years {#data-engine} To understand what was lost — and what survives — when paid fantasy sports was banned, you first need to understand what Dream11 actually was, underneath the fantasy cricket branding. Dream11 was not primarily a gaming company. It was […]
Media Rights 101: How Indian Leagues Should Think About Broadcast Deals in 2026
Key Highlights Table of Contents The Two Stories Playing Out Simultaneously in Indian Sports Media Indian sports media rights in 2026 are telling two stories at once, and most league operators are only paying attention to the wrong one. The story everyone is watching is the cricket media rights crisis. JioStar — formed by the […]
The Shooting League of India: Why India’s Newest League Could Be Its Smartest Business Play
Key Highlight Table of Contents The World’s First: What It Actually Means {#worlds-first} When the Shooting League of India held its inaugural edition in February 2026, the NRAI and its franchise owners were not just launching another sport’s attempt to replicate the IPL playbook. They were creating an asset class that had never existed anywhere […]
The Second Screen Problem: Why Indian Sports Broadcasts Are Losing the Next Generation
Key Highlights Table of Contents The Numbers That Look Good — and the Problem They’re Hiding {#numbers} IPL 2025 produced numbers that are genuinely staggering. Over a ten-week season, the tournament clocked 1.19 billion viewers across TV and digital — one of the largest sustained sports broadcast audiences ever recorded anywhere in the world. JioHotstar’s […]
The League vs. The Tournament: Why India Keeps Getting the Format Wrong
Key Highlights Table of Contents The $17.7 Billion Argument for Getting the Format Right In January 2008, in a marquee hotel in Mumbai, eight franchises were sold at auction for a combined $723.59 million. The event was the founding auction of the Indian Premier League. The Mumbai franchise — the most expensive — went for […]
Sports Data Is Worth ₹1,000 Crore But Indian Leagues Are Giving It Away for Free
Key Highlights Table of Contents The Billion-Dollar Asymmetry: Who Made Money from India’s Sports Data Here is a number worth sitting with: Dream11, at its peak valuation in 2021, was worth $8 billion. It was India’s first gaming unicorn, the most followed fantasy sports platform in the world with 250 million users, and the title […]