India International Sports Summit

Another trip...another great sporting experience. I went down to Mumbai these past few days to attend the India International Sports Summit hosted by Transstadia. Fortunately, Vanita's company sent her to the summit as well so we got a mini holiday out of it. The objective was to discuss ways to grow the sporting landscape in India.  There were about 500 attendees made up of government officials, marketers, NGO heads, club admin staff and sports legends. 

Overall, it was a great networking event for Vanita and I and an excellent opportunity for us to learn more about the stregnths and areas of opportunity within the Indian sporting landscape. Also, growing football in India took up about 60% of the summit content which was reassuring given what my objective in coming to this country is. The lowlights were many pompous speakers who loved listening to the sound of their own voice, moderators only looking to create controversy, pointless questions from the audience and spending 2 days being sold on why sports are a smart investment in India.
My recommendations are that next year there are more corporate marketers and governmental officials in the audience so at least we are selling sports to some of the people who hold the purse strings.  Also, there should be more breakout sessions as everyone got a little antsy sitting in their seats for about 8 hours a day.  This was the first summit and I'm confident that future ones will be even better.
I've included some pictures from the event.  The first one is of me, PIFA founder Nirvan Shah and agent Yogesh Joshee (who is KC Wizards player Sunil Chhetri's agent).The second one of is me with AIFF marketing head Sukhvinder Singh. The third is of Vanita with Indian cricket legend Kapil Dev. The final one is of me and Indian national team coach (and former Rapids coach) Bob Houghton. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 9, 2020 at 10:13 AM

    Crictime is a reliable T20 World Cup 2020 Live Streaming Channel where you can enjoy live streaming, score, updates and much more for free.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3 Cities, 3 Football Academies

Image
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few of the top youth football Academies in India.  It’s always interesting to see first-hand some of the blood, sweat and tears football administrators are investing into the future of the sport in the country.  Not to mention, I love experiencing different cultures, norms and idiosyncrasies in each place I visit (there are many).  I won't get too deep into my personal adventures and challenges of traveling through West Bengal and Punjab in the insanely hot month of May.  I'll need to save those for another blog.   I've included the places I’ve visited with some pictures. Pailan World School (Kolkata) http://www.pailanworldschool.com/ Workers putting in artificial turf for the new FIFA Youth Academy Chandigarh Football Academy http://chandigarh.gov.in/dept_sports7.htm The hostel where the CFA players live YFC Rurka Kalan (Rurka Kalan, Punjab...
Read more

Liverpool International Football Academy Coaches – Ray Curtis and Michael Rice

Image
The last half of 2013 was one ongoing conversation about the proposed partnership between Liverpool Football Club and our client DSK Group.  We all knew that only good could come out of this relationship, however we also knew that the level of good would be contingent on the coaches which Liverpool FC selected to represent the Academy in India.  This point couldn’t be hammered home any harder as I’ve seen countless projects fail in India due to the international club’s inability to identify the right type of coaches to make the trip to India. It’s not that these coaches lacked technical expertise or coaching ability, actually that’s never the case, it’s that they lacked a positive attitude and patience.  I actually wrote a post about this which can be found a few months back.  The coaches selected to run the Liverpool International Football Academy DSK Shivajians, Ray and Michael, were handpicked by a trusted member of the Liverpool FC international programming...
Read more

Barcelona

Image
A few months ago my client at Conscient Football and I were discussing options for an "Exposure Trip" we were planning for a group of Delhi based youth footballers.  The obvious locations came up; Manchester, London, Milan, Madrid, Munich, etc... But then Barcelona was mentioned and it was obvious that the meeting was over right then and there. There were no other options.  Barcelona is located in the country that just won the most recent FIFA World Cup, is home to the best football club in the world and home to the best football player in the world.  Why would we take the players anywhere else??? So fast forward to May 12th.  I'm at Indira Gandhi airport in Delhi with 3 other staff members meeting with 27 sets of parents and assuring them that their little princes will be fine.  I'm holding passports, collecting forms, smiling widely, shaking hands and doing my best to exude confidence and responsibility.  Somehow we get the 27 players thr...
Read more