Ashok Namboodiri, Kolkata
There was a moment at Eden Gardens last week that captured not just the soul of Indian cricket, but the future of the global sports economy. A Test match that ended in under three days, on a pitch that drew criticism, in conditions that offered little balance still attracted more than 100,000 spectators across the truncated contest. They came despite the early finishes, despite the controversy, despite the foregone conclusion.
Why? Because in sport, loyalty is immune to logic. And in 2025, that irrational loyalty has quietly become the most rational investment in the entire media industry. As Tilmann Gruber points out, institutional capital has discovered a truth that leagues always sensed but never articulated: sports fandom behaves like a subscription that never cancels.
Streaming platforms bleed users every quarter. Algorithms destabilise creator-driven attention. Box office fortunes swing wildly. Social platforms can become irrelevant in a season. But sports? Sports is inelastic demand. Sports is identity. Sports is ritual. Fans stay through losing streaks, through boardroom chaos, through price hikes, through bad officiating, through rank turners. They stay because they are not consuming a product – they are defending a part of themselves.
This behavioural stickiness is why private equity has poured into sports at unprecedented scale. Teams in the US now command $4 – 10 billion valuations, forcing leagues to institutionalise capital. Every deal is driven by the same insight: loyalty can be monetised with astonishing predictability.
If the West has discovered the economics of loyalty, India has lived it for decades. You could feel it at Eden Gardens. A child in the stands, worried that Shubman Gill would not bat. Fans pouring in regardless of match duration. Communities uniting around a Test that, on paper, should have disappointed. What markets call audiences, India calls devotees. What investors call inelastic demand, India calls tradition…and What leagues call recurring revenue, India calls cricket.
Indian fandom rests on four unshakeable pillars: 1. Emotion – sport here is personal, visceral, tribal. 2. Ritual – viewing habits pass from grandparents to parents to children. 3. Scale – the audience base is the size of a continent and 4. Memory – sport is nostalgia, mythology, and nationhood intertwined. This is why India, and increasingly women’s cricket delivers viewership, attendance, and commercial outcomes that defy economic headwinds. Loyalty here is not transactional; it is inheritance.
The New Playbook for fandom involves building integrrated sports platforms and not isolated teams. Tomorrow’s winners will be portfolio organisations, not standalone franchises.
Indian sports still lacks a unified fan CRM. The next wave will have direct – to – fan ecosystems, personalised commerce, loyalty scoring, dynamic membership clubs and predictive engagement models. Owning the fan ID is the new gold standard.
And so there is a need to own the narrative and not just the match. Fans don’t consume sport; they consume stories. Broadcasters and teams must produce year-round content: documentaries, podcasts, behind-the-scenes storytelling, data – driven shows and local-language narratives. India creates sporting passion better than any place on earth…now it must create the storytelling to match.
Finally, if pricing power is used responsibly, fans will follow. Dynamic ticketing, premium hospitality, merchandise drops, and layered subscription models are not risks. They are untapped revenues powered by deep affinity.
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