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At a sports summit in Mumbai, female influencers addressed young women athletes on leveraging social media for financial independence and visibility, highlighting a shift in India's sports culture. With the Indian sports market booming—expected to reach $130 billion by 2030—female athletes are pushing for a greater share, despite being overshadowed by men.
At a sports summit in Mumbai, female influencers addressed young women athletes on leveraging social media for financial independence and visibility, highlighting a shift in India's sports culture. With the Indian sports market booming—expected to reach $130 billion by 2030—female athletes are pushing for a greater share, despite being overshadowed by men.
There were the usual speakers you would expect at a sports summit: Current and former champions shared lessons from their journeys. Business and industry leaders presented numbers showing growth in viewership.
But as dozens of young female athletes filed into an auditorium in India's commercial hub of Mumbai, the choice of two female influencers to deliver pep talks spoke volumes about this moment for Indian women in sports. They talked about how to be authentic on social media to connect with fans, grow their audiences and make money off it.
One of them, Aanchal Agarwal, a comic and a former amateur badminton player, focused on financial independence. Agarwal -- who described herself as "so chronically online that, even as I am talking to you right now, in my head I am watching reels" -- said that an athlete's shelf life is short and that they should seize their moment.
"Get that coin, girl!" she told The Sports Women Huddle.
India's sports market is booming, and female athletes who have long labored in the shadow of men want to make sure they get their share of it.
A recent study by Google and Deloitte estimates that there are 655 million sports fans in the country, and that the broader sports market is expected to be worth $130 billion by 2030, growing at nearly double the rate of the country's GDP.
For female athletes, the growth has brought new sports leagues, growing attendance and viewership, especially in cricket, the national pastime. But the windfalls are minuscule compared with those earned by their male counterparts. The women feel constrained by a male-dominated system -- from organizers to advertisers -- that is only now slowly changing.
Jinisha Sharma, the director of Capri Sports, which counts two women's sports franchises among its five, said that investing in women's sports was reaping dividends in other parts of the world. Among the successes she named: rising attendance at women's soccer matches in Britain; the American basketball star Caitlin Clark lifting up the WNBA; and her fellow American, Ilona Maher, drawing large audiences to women's rugby.
"None of that happened overnight. It happened because people believed, long before the proof was obvious," Sharma said. "That same potential exists in India. But what holds us back isn't talent or desire -- it's the barriers that start so early and are so often overlooked."
India is slowly becoming a multisport nation. In urban centers, more people are playing pickup sports, including basketball, pickleball and badminton. There is community building through boot camps and exercise groups like "Sisters in Sweat." But cricket is still the most dominant sport, with nearly half a billion fans. It dominates the market and penetrates almost every home.
India's commercial cricket league, the Indian Premier League, is valued at more than $10 billion. Its current $16 million-a-match media rights are second only to the NFL's $27 million, according to industry reports.
When the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the sport's highest body, decided three years ago to set up a sister league, the Women's Premier League, some of the country's largest corporations stepped in with more than $500 million combined to buy five franchises, sums previously unheard of in women's sports.
These investments ripple down to the grassroots, giving girls hope that there are sustainable careers for women in sports. In 2023, the highest-paid female cricket player signed a contract for about $415,000 in the first auction. That is less than one-third of the highest-paid male player's take in the men's first auction, but transformative. Until a decade ago, female players competing in the World Cup still needed other day jobs.
Now, there are women's commercial leagues at the state level, and junior competition at the district level -- with scouts crisscrossing the country.
Providing women with competitive game time and institutional support will help enable them to become stars, said Namrata Parekh, the co-founder of Meraki Sport and Entertainment and the CEO of a men's football club in West Bengal State.
"We are a hero-worshiping country. More than the sport, it is about the winning stories," she said.
Preparations for the women's cricket World Cup next month demonstrate how slow development has been. Just weeks before the start, the venue for the final remains undecided, and there is no word on how to get tickets -- leading many experts to point out that even the sport's largest event is treated as an afterthought to the men's.
"Are we living in a man's world when it comes to sport? The answer is yes," Sania Mirza, a former star Indian tennis player, said.
One major hurdle is persuading advertisers to expand the range of products that women can promote, which requires a shift in thinking. Mirza said female athletes face a quandary in branding, because Indian society expects contradictory things of them.
"We like world beaters in this part of the world, but we don't want them to act like world beaters. We still want them to act like they are ," she said, using a Hindi word for demure. "So if you act like a world beater, they're like, 'They have attitude and they're arrogant.' But if then you are acting like, oh, you're , then they say 'Oh, you don't have killer instinct.'"
"There's no winning in that," she added. "In short, you don't do anything for other people -- you do for yourself."
That is where social media comes in.
Some of the most prominent female athletes have millions of followers and were growing their bases before they got coverage in traditional media. They share their moments of glory, but also their lighter sides -- spending time with their pets, doing the floss dance to shake up the crowd or teasing a teammate over a penchant for naps.
The influencers speaking at the summit in Mumbai emphasized that people are interested to see how athletes train, what they eat and what they wear. If they connect with followers, the money will follow. Female athletes -- from cricketers to boxers and badminton players -- are now the faces of sneakers, banks, sunscreen, tires and house paint.
In between sessions and panels in Mumbai, the young athletes posed, flexed and smiled in selfie booths. They also met with brand representatives and agencies that can help them find advertising and sponsorship deals.
At one table, three young swimmers were talking to Smriti Dubey and Shikhar Vaidya, the co-founders of ReDesyn, an online platform that matches content creators with products on a shopping platform. The company was looking for micro-ambassadors -- people with smaller but well-engaged followings to promote products.
"We are trying to find athletes who are underrepresented and help you get brands," Vaidya told them.
The athletes pulled out their phones and opened Instagram to show their pages and followers. The founders discussed how their platform works, and how their team crunches data to match a product with an athlete.
Then, the athletes had to rush back inside for another panel.
"How to get in touch with you?" Dubey asked Astha Choudhury, a swimmer who holds a national record.
"Instagram, obviously," she replied.
Source: EconomicTimes
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