Five points to remember when India hosts next World Cup

Last 3,4 years have been remarkable and heart-warming insofar more hockey on Indian televisions and India hosting many major tournaments on its soils.

Now, almost all major tournaments are telecast live; with quality production to boot; and also shown on prime time.

Hockey India League and hosting of 2,3 major FIH tournaments addressed another vacuum. The sport is definitely more visible now.

Still, hockey doesn’t attract much crowd on the stands matching its potential except in some non-traditional centres. Its popularity has not increased even with the narrowing down of historical shortcomings mentioned above.

We saw empty stands during Senior and Junior World Cups; some other international events were hosted without public even taking any serious note of it.

Hockey India has been largely successful in organizing events, sometimes continuously one after other, with precision.

Administratively, yes we are vibrant and dynamic; with most events sold commercially too. We even set benchmark.

We host more tournaments than any other country; more competitions are telecast Live.

Can we then say that our hockey’s popularity has increased?

Only marginally. The crowd did not throng stands either.

What are the reasons?

What needs to be done?

First, we have understand where do we fail. Then only we can devise solution.

We in India conceive hosting tournaments as a competition, nothing beyond that. Hype is thus created as to which medal India will win. One big problem here is once we lose the steam in the competition –which are quicker nowadays — the event hardly evokes any interest with the home public. Most followers know India cannot beat the best of the world, so they neglect.

So the first need is not to see hosting tournament merely as a competition. We have to look beyond and define the concept and contours of competitions, and think out of box.

I advocate the following five points to help redefine the way we organize events, the objective behind and how we can move to next level insofar as the subject in question.

These are suggested after carefully following the recent World Cup.

Innovative concept beyond competition: Let’s celebrate hockey was the concept of The Hague World Cup. It was a huge hit. HI need to create an entity like this, and sell to the public, and make hockey event not just a competition but a festival to celebrate and be part of it.

Sowing seeds for Family Culture: Except Chandigarh and Ranchi, it seems hockey venues do not attract family fans, instead only hockey fans. Devise ways and means to make Indian sports applicable to families, and this is not an easy job without Club culture in place, but better to try. Proper scheduling of matches, events enticing to kids are must.

Entertaining Environment: People won’t purchase one ticket for one match and then go back to home. Normally, people go by a day’s ticket. How will they then spend the whole day, say 8-10 hours in the stadium? Make elaborate environ, with stalls all around, music and entertainment in place, effectively there should be scope for anybody to spend two to three hours easily in the surroundings of stadium, tension free, mere entertainment beyond competition, where all team members to come and mingle.

Creation of Merchandise mania: Create and popularize merchandise. This culture doesn’t exist now, has to be developed to catch up with Indian Football and cricket. For that first step is NOT to change the national colours. Polularize National team wear, hockey sticks (plastic, balloon kind) and set a target at least 25 % percent of stands should wear Indian team jersey; waving merely the national flags is not sufficient.

Side events: The Hague World Cup was known for Side Events, number of which exceeds even the number of matches played in the World Cups. There are well documented reports on this, need not elaborate further except India need to popularize systematically veteran, indoor, street, disabled, corporate, celebrity kind of hockey involving in particular corporate and Municipal complexes. The side-events has to start unfolding at least six months before the World Cup. Chain of cheap events in big and branded school and college complexes (esp. Management institutes) and top brand educational institutions are a must.

What happens in India is once a title sponsor is obtained, administrators go relax, stop thinking everything else, except to bring more political heavyweights to matches and ceremonies. Distributing complementary tickets and VIP muska mindset sets in. One can always understand the exigencies of such things in our set up, but at the same time if HI is interested to revive hockey, it should first change the way it organizes major events. Hosting is improve the profile of hockey, not just to compete well.

It should now on consider fans the focal point of hosting tournaments and bringing more and more sections of people into the fold of hockey.

Its better to think about and implement each of the above suggestions, or something better HI may postulate, one by one in each tournament we host, starting from Bbhubneswar Champions Trophy, and then everything in the next four years when we host the 16-team World Cup in 2018.