Lot of scope for private sector involvement in sports: Sports ministry Jt. Sec

PK Jha, joint secretary in the Sports Ministry, feels there is still a lot of scope for private sector involvement in the development of sports in India.

“There is a lot of improvement and scope for involvement for the private sector in sports development."

For now, most things are supported by the government in sports. And there is a need for the private players to step in, and they can adopt sports development to help as well," said the joint secretary (development) at a FICCI event on Tuesday.

"This can be the basis for CSR support to grassroots development as well. Currently, the major aspect that needs addressing is the identification of talent and scouting at the grassroots levels,” he added.

Former India player and current BCCI Cricket Advisory Committee member Ashok Malhotra said one can learn from the Indian cricket board how to make other sports popular and financially healthy.

“One should take a leaf out of the BCCI playbook because of how they market the sport. Why has the IPL done well, because it has been marketed well, and one needs to do that? In our country, there are so many private companies that back sports or even state governments such as Odisha. "I am sure other states come in as well. Sport now represents a much bigger landscape and we need the private sector's support as well,” said Malhotra.

The decorated badminton ace Manjusha Kanwar added that it is important for support systems at all levels to be equally robust.

“There are so many layers in the system. At what layer should the private and public players come in, should they come at the intermediate level or the grassroots? It should all work towards making India a sporting nation. We have different platforms and levels across the sports sector for bringing in private-sector support. They all should be benchmarked in terms of the kind of support and involvement needed for corporate stakeholders to come in and make an impact.” she said.