For the last couple of years, women have been making the right kind of noise in the field of sports. Not only are they breaking the shackles of gender stereotypes and proudly representing the country in big league and international sporting events, but are bringing home all the laurels.
The topic, women's Sport- The Future of India Story, was discussed in one of the panel discussions at the recently held e4m-GroupM Let’s Play: Sports marketing summit. The panel was chaired by Mausumi Kar, MD, Motivator India, and had Yannick Colaco, Co-Founder, Fancode; Yash Lahoti, Founder & CEO, Women's CricZone; Vishal Yadav, Founder & CEO, Female Cricket, and Sai Narayan, CMO, Policybazaar.com
The session kick-started with the panellists reminiscing the 2017 Women's Cricket World Cup where the Indian team lost the final by a mere nine runs, and meandered to how different the situation is in the present day.
Lahoti said, “A lot has changed over the years. If this panel were happening in 2017, I don't think we would have had this topic of women's sport. That incident, where nobody expected Indian women cricket team to be in the finals and lose by nine runs, changed a lot of momentum. That performance showed people that women do play cricket and play well. In fact, till then, many did not know that women's cricket existed. We have come a long way from there.”
Speaking from the perspective of someone running an academy that exclusively trains young girls in cricket, Yadav pointed out, “There has been massive strides. Apart from the equal pay policy that was recently announced and the women's IPL, a lot has happened and everything is out there on every form of media possible. But to understand what has changed, we also got to look at the past because only then you will be able to co-relate and compare how far we have come from where we were in the 2010s. After the 2017 Women's Cricket World Cup, I received many messages from parents and young girls inquiring where they can start their professional journey from. I had no answer. It took me a few months to reach out to a few coaches and ask for relevant answers. And not being able to find a suitable response forced me to start my own cricket academy which was exclusively for female cricketers. And we have trained over 400 girls in the last three years only in Mumbai alone.”
As a marketer and an avid sports, especially cricket, lover, Narayan said, “I follow cricket very closely and when I say cricket I mean the sport, not men's or women's. Before the IPL also, I have been following the Big Bash League for women. As a marketer, it is not the first time that we as a brand will be thinking of investing in women's cricket. In 2017, the men's championship trophy was happening and we invested in the women's championship trophy as well. And the cost at which we got that tournament and the kind of results that we got, were beyond our imagination. Since then, we evaluate women's sports through the same lens with which we evaluate any media property, and invest in it with cautious efforts.”
Colaco added, “When I started Fancode 3.5 years ago, our prime reason for existence was because I felt that 95 per cent of sports in this country is under-served. Every broadcaster was running after a handful of events across the years and spending tons of money and everything else was getting more coverage. So, we staring saying that there is this massive co-fan base who have strong affinity to sports – be it rugby, football, athletics, boxing. When we built the platform, we used digital to get to these niche audience and build an affinity around them.”