India's sports sponsorship surpasses Rs 9,500 crore, spends saw 62% growth in 2021

Full length of batsman playing cricket on pitch against blue sky during sunny day

The size of the Indian sports industry spends is estimated to have surpassed Rs 9,500 crore in 2021, with a 62 percent year-on-year growth.

Last year saw a comeback for sports sponsorships and media deals, as compared to 2020 when the pandemic took over, said GroupM ESP’s sports report launched today.

The report said that sponsorship data from 2014 to 2019 inclusive of media expenses and athlete endorsement reveals that the industry had almost doubled in scale in the five-year period before the arrival of COVID-19.

Despite the challenges in 2020, with Rs 6,018 crore, sports advertising expenditure (AdEx) surpassed 2019 levels in both TV and digital. The biggest contribution to the sports industry spends, almost two-thirds of it, comes from advertising expenses by brands on media. In spite of the decline the industry saw in 2020, media spends bounced back to a 15 percent growth over 2019, on the back of heavy investments by traditional and new-age brands on TV and digital platforms.

Cricket remains the most popular sport, accounting for 94 percent of the sports AdEx. The media spends on cricket in 2021 was higher Rs 5,657 crore than the overall media spends of 2019 Rs 5,232 crore.

The spending on sports celebrity endorsement grew by 11 percent year-on-year in 2021. A total of 444 brand endorsement deals happened in 2021, with cricketers accounting for 318 endorsement deals and 87 percent of total brand endorsement value.

Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma, Neeraj Chopra, are the top athletes in sports celebrity brand endorsement.

The Tokyo Olympics increased emerging sports athletes' endorsements by 79 percent, accounting for 13 percent of the overall brand endorsement value. Leading in this segment is Neeraj Chopra who became the first track and field athlete to win a gold at the Olympics. Chopra added 12 new brands to his list with an estimated endorsement value of Rs 20 crore. PV Sindhu, who has been the leading female athlete in terms of brand endorsement, continued to be at the top with 14 brands in her portfolio.