Opinion: Hockey India League must stay brave in its return | Hockey News

NEW DELHI: The return of Hockey India League (HIL) is perhaps the news everyone connected to the sport globally was looking forward to. The promise made a year ago is ready to be delivered, the added bonanza being the introduction of the women’s edition that will run simultaneously along with the men’s tournament.
The leagues begin in just over 60 days from now, on December 28; and the major part, onboarding players through an auction, has been done after a stumble, which was the kind of fear that kept the HIL on the backburner for seven years.
TEETHING ISSUES
Convincing corporates to invest in the league was only possible after two consecutive Olympic bronze medals. Still, one (Ranchi – Navoyam Sports Ventures Pvt Ltd) of them chickened out as the men’s team owner at the last moment. But Hockey India (HI) did well to have a back-up in Tarini Prasad Mohanty, a mining magnate from Odisha, who invested in the name of his native village, and Team Gonasika (registered with its base as Visakhapatnam) replaced Navoyam in the auction hall to keep the total number of men’s teams at eight.
The women’s league was initially announced as a six-team event but a last-minute development saw HI announcing that the remaining two franchises — Hyderabad and Mumbai — will join only from Season 2 onwards, which will keep the maiden Women’s HIL a four-team affair.
That’s the kind of pre-emptive actions HI will have to keep ready in the first three years of HIL’s return, which are expected to have a few bumps on the way.
BROADCAST PARTNER
Where HI missed out initially is onboarding a broadcaster ahead of the players’ auction, which is a kind of clincher in the success of a franchise-based league that is trying to re-establish itself. It was one of the reasons for the less-than-expected digital outreach and buzz around the announcement of the league and the subsequent auction, despite a YouTube livestream.
It is understood that Reliance-owned Jio is virtually in. If that holds true, even if the contract turns out to be for the first season only initially, a broadcaster like Jio can fetch HIL the eyeballs, which is pivotal because the league won’t travel across the country this year.
The men’s edition will be played at the Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium in Rourkela and the women’s league will be held at the Marang Gomke Jaipal Singh Astroturf Hockey Stadium in Ranchi.
It’s a decision that will spare HI, the franchises and the broadcasters the logistical costs in HIL’s re-establishing year. But it also brings along a few challenges.
GRABBING ATTENTION
It will be a challenge for the new government in Odisha to match the kind of buzz and fanfare that the former Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and his team used to generate around major hockey events in the state. Despite that, it will remain a task to keep the interest of the locals and fill up the 20,000-capacity stadium for 36 days in a row.
The women’s league in Ranchi will face a similar challenge, even though the stadium’s capacity there is only 5,000.
It’s also difficult to see national media organisations, who don’t have local bureaus around Rourkela and Ranchi, to station reporters for a month-long duration, despite the presence of Indian and international stars. The league’s first two weeks coinciding with the Indian cricket team’s Test tour of Australia will also present a challenge in getting traction digitally, in the news and on live broadcast.
The start of a tournament is always important to get engagement and build interest; and with challenges abound, HIL’s digital planning holds the key and will have to stand out.
The men’s HIL will run from December 28 to February 1, while the women’s edition, which is scheduled to begin on the same date as men’s, will undergo a change in its duration after the number of teams in Season 1 reduced from six to four.
Another major announcement is still awaited.
The Hero Group was the HIL’s title sponsor from 2013 to 2015, while it was known as the Coal India HIL in 2016 and 2017 before HI hit the pause button on the league. A title-sponsor is another major check-box in sustenance of a franchise-based league. While it’s likely that Hero will revive its relationship with the HIL, the official announcement on the name is still awaited.
SUSTAIN ALL-ROUND INTEREST
The episode with the withdrawal of Ranchi franchise is what presents the biggest scare to HIL in its bid to sustain itself. Corporate money is what any franchise-based league in the world flourishes on. If corporate pulls the plug, like Navoyam did, it can lead to a ripple effect — especially at a time when the HIL is trying to find its footing again.
Companies like the Charles Group (Chennai), Vedanta Limited (Odisha) and Resolute Sports (Hyderabad) and investor Tarini Prasad Mohanty (Team Gonasika) are new to the business of owning sports teams and will take time to build conviction that their investment will eventually work out.
While the actual terms of the contract are not known, HI will have to allow franchises the freedom to earn through means like advertisement revenue, player engagement, branding, digital campaigns and so on in order to get on the path of achieving a break-even within the first three seasons of the league.
Corporate thinking revolves around return of investment, and HI will have to understand that. Even if it requires them to give an extra leeway to the owners in the first three years of HIL, it won’t be a bad bargain to sustain the league and cash in on it in the subsequent years.
The International Hockey Federation (FIH) has already given a clear 35-day window to the HIL for the next 10 years, which means the international calendar can be planned accordingly and the availability of top players in HIL is sorted.
But the sustenance of HIL will largely depend on navigating through the occasional storms in the first three years, and HI should plan all its moves with that in mind, with a Plan B in place.