India’s Olympic Dilemma: Sustaining Enthusiasm Beyond Multi-Sport Events

India’s Olympic Dilemma: Sustaining Enthusiasm Beyond Multi-Sport Events

The cheering Indian sport fans at the 2024 Paris Olympics showcased how interested Indians were in sports like hockey, boxing, wrestling, javelin, badminton, shooting, and weightlifting. The resounding cheer for the Indian team was something to see but it soon fizzles out once the event gets over. Unlike cricket, which has a persistently large fan following all through the year, other sports find it very hard to garner the interest and attention of the public outside the Olympics, Asian Games, or Commonwealth Games.

Comparing Google search interest in the last five years for three of India’s top athletes—cricketer Virat Kohli, shooter Manu Bhaker and javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra—some revealing trends emerge. Where Kohli is an occupation of the fan’s mind space permanently, for the other two athletes, the graph only spikes when they have significant events to their credit, such as Chopra’s gold medal win in 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics. Off these events, interest in non-cricket sports dwindles, partly due to the lack of targeted publicity, broadcasting, investment, advertising, and awareness.

This atten-tion tape reveals an aspect important in the struggle for India to emerge as a leading sporting country: That’s despite a tall expectation for a record Olympic medal haul at Paris 2024— India could garner only six more than its previous best-ever show at Tokyo 2020. For India to win more Olympic medals, the vision should transcend elite-athlete support, build sports mass participation, enhance the flow to competitive-level athletes, and ensure seamless support to athletes at all stages with better facilities and international exposure.

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The Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) has been very supportive of medal prospects in this edition. However, for the country to embrace the model of success of nations like Great Britain, which had almost totally changed her Olympic fortunes on the basis of strategic investment and a high-performance culture, this overall approach, including sustained public engagement, better broadcasting of non-cricket sports, and robust support at every rung of the sporting ecosystem, is necessary.