The sports league culture in India has evolved over the last decade. As with most things to do with leagues, the initiative will have to be taken by the IPL and to a lesser extent the PKL and ISL for it to filter down to the other leagues. Leagues have put several sports on the broadcast and awareness map, but too often without the necessary development at the grassroots or junior level. Now is the right time to add value to the league's verticals by enhancing and enhancing the role of franchises and giving representation and rights to players and staff. If things evolve as they should, the next decade will go a long way in creating a tailor-made sports culture in India, which will also translate into a broader sports ecosystem framework and consistently good performances across an entire boutique of disciplines. The IPL has shown that it can be done. Now it's up to others to feasibly replicate it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay Growth of a Nascent Industry by Joy Bhattacharjya To put things in context about Indian sports, I usually like to recount an incident from late 2014, when my Chilean Myself and my colleague Javier Ceppi went to meet the Ministry of Sports regarding the FIFA U-17 World Cup to be held in 2017. The mid-level official we met yawned, scratched himself and then told us that since we were the hosts, India should definitely have had two teams playing, India "A" and India "B". Luckily Javier's understanding of Hindi wasn't as good as it was later, so I was able to quickly push him out of the room before he understood. An official with fifteen-odd years in the sport thought that a football World Cup might see two Indian teams playing. This is probably a good indication of the quality of staff currently in the sports industry. And a very good reason why we need the best minds we can find for Indian sport. This article does not attempt to present an exhaustive list of all possible career options in Indian sport but, rather, provides a fairly personal snapshot of how opportunities and needs have changed dramatically and an idea of ​​the kind of talent we are likely to need to move forward. My first real contact with the sports profession was in 1996. After a stint in software, writing endless COBOL programs to generate payroll for coal plants in distant lands, I had decided that media and sports were the careers best suited to me. me. It was in 1996, when I was working for the now defunct Business India Television, that I first heard about Transworld International (TWI), which had its office right above ours. I was introduced to a producer there through a colleague and found out they were planning a cricket quiz for Home TV. They had appointed a statistician to set up the questions, but I managed to meet the producer and tried to explain that interesting quiz questions usually weren't just about numbers. They moved forward with the statistician, but came back right after the first few episodes. And from being a freelance question setter, I slowly worked my way up to becoming the producer of the show. My path has not been unique at all. Back then, the internet had not yet reached India and there were absolutely no search agencies for sports professionals to hire. In the TWI office, all the staff were literally walk-ins or recommendations. There was also a staff member therewho the head of TWI production had found crying in the lobby of a corporate office because she had failed a job interview. He hired her immediately and, for good measure, hired her sister a few months later! In those early days, it was a heady feeling to work with sports, especially Indian cricket and football, but the one question I would inevitably ask was: "Why does a country with a billion people earn so little?" And, unfortunately, it is the only part of the question that has actually changed. Over the next ten years the figure in question went from one billion to 1.2 billion people. If one has to look at a turning point in Indian sports, it should be 2008. Abhinav Bindra's Olympic gold medal was a huge turning point. While Leander's stunning bronze in 1996 put us in medal contention after heartbreaking calls from Milkha Singh and PT Usha, Bindra was the one to reach the pinnacle. And it made a huge difference. Being a medal winner was great; being the best in the world has taken a huge step forward. The other revolution in Indian sports came with the start of the IPL in the same year. The event had less to do with the cricket, which was already at a fairly high level, and more to do with the way it was organized and organised. I remember dealing with a member of the Indian Cricket Board on a routine matter in the mid-2000s, and my mail was duly dropped off by a secretary, printed out and placed on the gentleman's table. He then dictated a response, which was transcribed, printed and sent back to us, arriving within a week. In the first week of the IPL, with new challenges every day, I sent an email to the same organization at 7pm for a clarification on the eligibility of the players. I received a confirmation within a minute and a detailed note outlining all possible exceptions to the rule and their interpretation, reported to all competing franchises within the hour. The IPL brought a professionalism to the way Indian sport was run, which was otherwise rarely seen on a concerted basis. And we probably needed it as much as we need our future stars. How important is it, exactly, to cover sports well? In 2000, we started our first session of the ESPN School Quiz Olympics, with Harsha Bhogle as the host. It was an absolute revelation; we were amazed at how much the competing 9th and 10th standard kids knew about international sport. Their knowledge of any sport regularly broadcast on cable television was absolutely brilliant. But anything in India beyond cricket, especially women's sport, was a real black hole. I remember one particular sequence where an image of Leeds United footballer Harry Kewell received an instant response, with the other two teams shocked at not hitting the buzzer in time. In the same episode, a photo of Shiny Abraham, one of India's best athletes, was shown. The first team tried PT Usha; the other two didn't even have a name to guess. If there was a reason for this, it was the absolutely appalling coverage of Indian sport on television. The real revolution began there in 1993, when Jagmohan Dalmiya and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), tired of being mistreated by Doordarshan, sold the rights to Indian cricket to IMG, with the telecast produced by TWI, IMG's television arm. TWI was India's first full-fledged sports production company, and its initial productions were almost completely made by international talent. But within a year the national matches also had to be covered second.