Commonwealth Games 2026: The Complete Commercial Playbook for Indian Athletes, Brands, and Managers
Key Highlights Table of Contents Here is how Indian sports stakeholders typically approach a major multi-sport Games. The event is announced. Athletes train. A few brand partnerships are signed in the weeks before the opening ceremony, usually reactive deals triggered by pre-Games media coverage. Athletes compete. Medal winners receive a brief wave of media attention, […]
What India Can Learn from Japan’s Sports Business Model Ahead of Asian Games 2026
Key Highlights Table of Contents On September 19, 2026, the twentieth Asian Games will open at Paloma Mizuho Stadium in Nagoya, Japan. India will send over 700 athletes across more than forty sports disciplines, with a formal target of surpassing the 107-medal haul from Hangzhou 2022 — India’s best-ever Asian Games performance, which included 28 […]
The Attention Economy of Indian Sports: Why Shorter, Faster Formats Will Win the Next Decade
Key Highlights Table of Contents There is a thought experiment worth running before diving into the data. Imagine you are designing a sport from scratch in 2026. You know that your target audience checks their phone 150 times a day, consumes most of their video content in clips under sixty seconds, watches 80% less television […]
The Sports Property That Died: Lessons from Indian Leagues That Failed
Key Highlights Table of Contents Graveyards are where the most useful lessons live. Indian sports discourse is fascinated by origin stories — how the IPL was conceived in a rush after the ICL threat, how Pro Kabaddi made indigenous sports viable, how the HIL revival gave hockey a professional heartbeat. These are important stories. But […]
Why Indian Sports Management Needs to Stop Copying the American Model
Key Highlights Table of Contents The American Model: What It Actually Is {#american-model} Before critiquing it, it is worth understanding what the American sports management model actually looks like in full — because the parts most commonly imported into Indian sports discourse are selectively chosen, giving a distorted picture of the whole. The American sports […]
The 10 Worst Mistakes Indian Sports Brands Make (And What to Do Instead)
Key Highlights Table of Contents Mistake 1: Buying a Logo Placement and Calling It a Sponsorship This is the foundational error from which most other mistakes flow. A brand signs a deal, gets its logo on a jersey, a boundary board, or a broadcast title card — and stops there. The cheque is written. The […]
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 […]
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 […]
Why Indian Sports Teams Need Their Own OTT Strategy (Not Just a JioHotstar Deal)
Key Highlights Table of Contents The Fundamental Problem With Rented Reach {#rented-reach} Here is a scenario that plays out across Indian sports every year. A team or league secures a broadcast deal. Matches air on JioHotstar or FanCode. Millions of people watch. The team gets a rights fee, some impressive viewership numbers in a post-season […]
The Indian Sports Merchandise Market Is Growing at 19% But Most Teams Are Missing Out
Key Highlights Table of Contents The 19.26% Number — And Why It’s the Right One to Track {#the-number} When sports business analysts discuss revenue in Indian sports, the conversation almost always starts with media rights. That is reasonable — media rights represent 43.33% of the current Indian spectator sports market and are the engine that […]