I read the news the other day that the Indian Golf Premier League (IGPL) is commencing and it will be played all across India and in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The league is backed by former cricketer Yuvraj Singh, who is now an avid golfer. This got me thinking as to the number of leagues in other sports that have come up in India ever since the professional league format was an astounding success with the Indian Premier league in 2008.

With the advent of leagues in Kabaddi, Volleyball, Football, Poker, Wrestling, Billiards, Hockey and other sports apart from Cricket, there has been a surge in investments and endorsements in Indian sport. Whether or not, the desired results have been accomplished is a talking point for another day, we want to focus more on the new financial landscape in the environment.

After researching on the same, we found out that the total sports market, i.e., endorsements, broadcasting and media spends, was at Rs.16,633 crores (1.8 billion dollars) for 2024, out of which Rs.1224 crores (133 million dollars) and Rs.7421 crores (820 million dollars) were for athlete endorsements and sponsorships respectively. Not surprisingly, cricket’s share in the pie of Rs.16,633 crores was 85% and 15% belonged to other sports.

Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma and Sachin Tendulkar command the largest share of endorsements in India. Virat Kohli is among the top earning athletes globally in endorsements. His endorsement income annually is supposed to be Rs.200 crores. (22 million dollars) His current brand value is around Rs.1150 crores (150 million dollars). Also, the top cricketers in India apart from the aforementioned names earn around Rs. 5-18 crores ($500,000-$2,000,000) from endorsements alone. This includes the likes of Rishabh pant, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah to name a few.

There has also been an interest in non-cricket sports stars as well. Neeraj Chopra, the two-time Olympic medallist, has been a brand magnet of late. He is endorsing Under Armour, Audi, VISA, Coca Cola among others. His current brand value is around 30 million dollars. Medal winners in the Olympics like Manu Bhaker, Mary Kom, Mirabai Chanu have also been attracting interest from brands. But the name that stands out amongst the women Olympian is two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu. Olympians at an average are earning between Rs.1-Rs.5 Crores. ( 100,000 dollars-500,000 dollars)

The projections for the future are also bullish. The projected size of the total sports commercial market is believed to grow to anything between Rs.18000-18500 crores (2 billion dollars) in 2026 and Rs.23,000-25,000 (around 3 billion dollars) crores in 2029

All these projections show that there could be a significant investment in other sports apart from cricket. The reason for this has been an improved showing of Indian athletes in the Olympic games. Javelin, Shooting and Wrestling are now some of the categories where a medal is almost guaranteed. However, a lot would depend on the performances of the athletes going forward.

Sportynomics will be doing an in-depth analysis on the above subject in the coming few weeks to analyse the growth in sponsorships and endorsement of new sports compared to cricket in India.