PlayCom 2025: Cooperation key for growth, feels sports industry leaders

Collaboration between major players will determine the growth and future of the corporate ecosystem in sports, felt industry leaders during a panel discussion at PlayCom 2025: Business of Sports Summit at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, on Friday.

The session, titled ‘Moneyball India – Where Capital Meets Competition’, featured Satyam Trivedi (CEO, GMR Sports), Sanjay Adesara (CEO, Adani Sportsline), Divyanshu Singh (CEO, JSW Sports), and Uditvanu Das (Associate Vice President, Head of Sports, Havas Play India) in conversation.

“I think this industry is at a juncture where we all need to collaborate with each other, create value, share best practices. There is growth that happens because of being competitive. And we equally realize, I think, the importance and value of being collaborative when required,” said Divyanshu.

“There is headroom for growth provided by this opportunity, which is great. So the choice that everyone here has is that either you fight for the same piece of pie or you expand the pie so everyone gets that much more,” added Uditvanu.

Return on investment, competition, and brand exposure were the other major talking points during the session, moderated by Kala Anand, Director, Sports Advisory at KPMG India.

Speaking about the significance of financial success, Divyanshu underlined the necessity of innovation for the sports industry to stay afloat.

“I think this industry will only grow when we start imbibing innovation a lot. Over the last decade we’ve seen, on the back of phenomenal success that cricket has shown us, that success has been tough to replicate in a lot of other sports.

“That’s because I think we’ve not taken innovation seriously. We’ve maybe tried to assume that what has worked in a particular sport, on a top-down model, will work in other sports. And hence right now we are at a juncture, needing new innovations and new business models,” said Divyanshu.

Meanwhile, Satyam broke down the profitability quotient in various sectors of the sports industry.

“So you broadly look at sports, you have investment coming from CSR-led initiatives. You have investment coming from branding and sponsorship. Then there are business initiatives and then athlete endorsements. So each of these businesses, when you look at the business model, is going to be very, very different.

“Let’s say when you talk about franchise or league-level investment, you go with a very long-term mindset because you know that it’s going to take at least three to five years for you to break even. But manufacturing is very different from that. Manufacturing is literally like any other FMCG business. But bottom line, if you look at any property that we evaluate, it is financial discipline. That’s, I think, the core of any investment that we look at because ultimately it’s a business and it has to meet business sets,” said Satyam.

Professing a bright future for the Indian sports industry, Uditvanu described the sector as still in its gestation period.

“Sports is a high capital–intensive business, where you keep investing for at least a few decades, and only after that it starts giving results. From an economic point of view, we are at a per capita income of around 2,800 dollars, similar to where China was in 2008. The moment we cross 3,500–3,700 dollars per capita income, the amount of extra money this economy will generate is going to be huge.”

“We are already at the start of the inflection point. The gestation period, the long waiting in the queues, I think, will come to an end very soon. The next decade will belong to this country for sure, and sport will be one of those sectors,” said Uditvanu.

Published on Sep 12, 2025