Football is the 'big' thing
Football or soccer as it is known in USA is the sports of the world. Even in India, which is a hard core cricket-only kind of country, is seeing more and more of football all across. It is now a common sight to see kids playing football in whatever open space is available. And when any sport gets such a huge following, money too is big and the Asian billionaires, who are fast to move are big owners of European football clubs.
Wang Jianlin, the owner of Chinese property company Dalian Wanda and fourth richest man in China, paid $52 million for a 20% stake in Spanish Club – Atleico Madrid. Singapore’s 9th richest man, Peter Lim, who is known as a Manchester United fan, bought a majority stake in Spanish club – Valencia FC. Tony Fernandes of AirAsia bought 66% stake in Queens Park Range and interestingly, 33% stake is owned by Lakshmi Mittal. And surely very few of us knew that Balaji and Venkateshwara Rao of Venky’s bought Blackburn Rovers club in 2010, spending £23million on the deal and taking on around £20million of the club's debt. This is considered to be one of the worst buys of clubs as it has been incurring losses of around £2 million a month since Dec 2012.
This kind of global buying, for football does not come as a surprise as it is a money making money. Cricket, in that context is very region specific and does not truly have such a mass global appeal. So hoping to make this kind of moolah from cricket seems too far fetched. Yes, football is where the money is and it’s a good move to bring about the India Super League – it is small now but surely has all signs of growing truly big. And yes, apart from cricketers, other sportsman also need to make a career and money.