@knittins raised the
question of why the English Premier League holds sway over Indian audiences. As
someone who was in the periphery of EPL watching 7-8 years back to someone who
follows it with as much interest as cricket now, this is my reasoning:
1) Timing - The English Premier League matches happen at an extremely
convenient time for Indian audiences - Saturday and Sunday evenings -
when they can relax and watch sports on the television. Also, the fact that
there is a continuous narrative going on, considering that the league
starts in August and ends in May, makes you tune in every weekend.
2) Quality of broadcast - Spain, Germany, and Italy too have fairly
competitive and high-quality leagues, but they do not attract as much
attention. There can be two reasons for this - timing and quality of broadcast.
Timing because the matches in these leagues start only at midnight for
Indian audiences which make them inconvenient. And significantly, the quality
of broadcast is way better in the English Premier League. Somehow the cameras
seem distant when you are watching La Liga or Bundesliga games, but in most
of the EPL games you feel you are much closer to the action. Also, the fact
that crowds sound more vociferous and full in EPL grounds and commentators are
more dramatic (not in the Saudi commentator GOOOL way :)).
3) Lack of quality choices - For an average Indian sports viewer,
there aren't too many places to go to if he wants to view high quality
Indian sport. Of course, there is cricket. But beyond that, there isn't
anywhere that you can go to ( the ISL, HIL, Kabbadi and Badminton leagues are
very nascent). When you think of the boom that happened in Indian satellite
television viewing after the '96 Cricket World Cup, the EPL was extremely
well poised to capture our attention. It was an established league with a
good set of superstars primarily led by David Beckham. I know of so many
friends who started following Manchester United primarily due to the Beckham
phenomenon. Also, football is a very easy sport to follow. There aren't too
many intricacies you need to know to start following the game.
4) Coolness factor - Just the way watching Hollywood movies is cooler
than watching Indian movies, it is quite possible that young kids gravitate
more towards Manchester United and not Mahindra United. This is relatively new
though, when I was growing up, I didn't notice it among my friends. But, among
the current young generation, it does seem to be so.
5) Purity of sport - Cricket has a fundamental flaw, in that its most
challenging format, Test cricket, is long and tedious to hold the attention of
audiences who cannot afford to spend that much time watching sport. So, the T20
format was created. And T20, for all its thrills and spills, is not something
special that you will recall a match from 5 years ago and relive it in your
memory. Whereas football doesn't have this issue. It's a game which needs very
little tinkering from a rules perspective and it has been the same way since it
was created. 90 minutes of high quality sport which is easy to understand and
still requires a very high skill level. Should work right?
6) Franchises are here to stay - Now let's say you support CSK. How
many players from CSK are actually from Chennai? There is only one Ashwin who
plays regularly. This in no way impedes someone from Chennai when he declares
his allegiance towards CSK. Ideally a Kannadiga should support KKR because
there are more Karnataka players there than in RCB. I started supporting Arsenal,
because at that time they played a brand of football which excited me and I
identified with them. You don't have to compulsorily have a direct association
with the club you support in the current scheme of things. If you needed that,
then Federer would have a very small group of Swiss fans.
So, once you start
identifying with a club and start supporting it religiously, your interest
deepens. There will be another guy who does the same for another club. And then
Manchester United face Chelsea, and thus start Twitter wars.
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