FIFA 'World Cup' 2022: Not just Byju’s, another Indian firm is betting big on India’s love for the beautiful game

 FIFA World Cup 2022: Not just Byju’s, another Indian firm is betting big on India’s love for the beautiful game

Fanatic Sports, an experiential sports ticketing and travel platform is expecting Rs 100 crore in sales revenue from ticket and travel packages for FIFA World Cup 2022 which will begin from November 21 with the finals being played on December 18.

 MARYAM FAROOQUI

 

APRIL 05, 2022 / 07:13 PM IST

Edtech firm Byju’s recently made headlines by becoming the first Indian firm to be an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2022. But it is not just the e-learning app that is writing the India story at the tournament being hosted by Qatar. Another Indian firm is betting big on the country’s growing love for football.

Fanatic Sports, an experiential sports ticketing and travel platform is expecting Rs 100 crore in sales revenue from ticket and travel packages for FIFA World Cup 2022 which will begin from November 21 with the finals being played on December 18.

The sports travel company, which is the joint exclusive sales agent of MATCH Hospitality in India for the sale of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, is looking to capture 50 percent of the Indian hospitality market. MATCH Hospitality, which is the official hospitality rights holder of the football tournament, is estimating business worth Rs 200 crore from India with the market contributing 6 percent to overall hospitality revenue of the World Cup.

Raghav Gupta, founder and CEO of Fanatic Sports, expects $10-15 million to come in from the sale of tickets alone from the Indian market.

Football fan following in India

“India has a massive football following and the same fan wants to watch the sport in stadiums. We are seeing strong demand across all spectrums of the market from budget fans to high net-worth individuals to large corporates or Indian multinationals who are using this opportunity to network with their clients. In the West, companies travel for sports to network and this is mirroring in India as well. Corporate hospitality for sports is building in India exponentially,” Gupta told Moneycontrol.

The packages that include travel, tickets to stadium and also accommodation starts from $950 to premium packages costing $35,000 for the finals.

While India has a small share in the overall sports tourism market, John Parker, director MATCH Hospitality AG, said that they are expecting India to be among the highest revenue generators for FIFA World Cup 2022.

“The sports experiential market in India has huge potential. Despite the pandemic impacting travel, we have seen a steady rise in Indian sports fans wanting to travel for such experiential travels,” he said.

Parker said that hospitality sports revenue will increase from Rs 80 crore in 2018 for the World Cup held in Russia to Rs 200 crore for the tournament this year. Also, the number of Indians attending FIFA World Cup 2022 is estimated to go up to over 7,000 people from 3,000 fans in 2018 for the Russia event.

“For 2022, India is an extremely key market because of its proximity to Qatar. Also, not everyone is aware of India’s affinity towards football. The stars in FIFA are not going to be strangers to the Indian market. We expect a good uptick. Applications for general tickets coming from the Indian market are strong,” said Parker. He added that on the overall hospitality sports revenue front, they expect to exceed the previous best of $660 million in 2014 during the Brazil World Cup.

Currently, the Indian market for official hospitality is 4-5 percent of the global market. And Gupta aims to make this more than 50 percent of this growing market.

COVID chaos

However, things were not smooth for the company in the last two years when COVID-19 hit the sports industry hard with tournaments getting cancelled or taking place with restrictions. The Tokyo Olympics was postponed by a year, one of the most followed sports tournaments the Indian Premier League (IPL) was delayed and it went behind closed doors in 2020.

“COVID-19 affected our business significantly. We had large events that we were committed to like the Olympics. From 2014-2019, there was good growth but then business in 2019-20 took a massive beating. Our business, which is international travel and stadiums, was the last in the pecking order to revive. We did some digital events but that was not significant enough to pick up revenues,” said Gupta, who did not disclose revenues the company recorded in pre-COVID times (FY19) and the coronavirus-impacted year (FY21).

But Gupta said that they forecast business to be 30 percent of pre-COVID levels for the year ended March 2021 (FY22) because business started reviving in the last five months. “If you see average monthly sales we are back to pre-COVID levels but yearly numbers are much lower because for seven months there were no sales. Going forward in 2022-23 (FY23), we expect business to be nearly close to pre-COVID levels and from FY24 it will be more than pre-pandemic levels,” he added.

In the current financial year, the company apart from its flagship event FIFA World Cup 2022 will offer hospitality and travel services for events including ICC T20 World Cup, Wimbledon, other football leagues and Formula 1, among others.

“Overall, 10-15 events are planned in 2022-2023,” said Gupta. This indicates the event pipeline reaching pre-COVID levels with the company covering over 10 events in 2019 including Cricket World Cup, Rugby World Cup and Wimbledon, and selling over 10,000 ticket and hospitality packages across all events. For Fanatic Sports, the best performing event has been the Cricket World Cup 2019.

On revival in sports tourism, Parker said that globally, there are sports happening in stadiums with spectators, which makes a massive difference.
He said that while everyone is open for business, there are certain places which are struggling like Hong Kong, China and other parts of Asia, and events are being heavily regulated.

“But Hong Kong, which had to cancel rugby (Hong Kong Sevens, which is the premier tournament of the World Rugby Seven Series), has announced that they are planning to take place in October this year and that is a major step for them and they are hopefully planning to take place with a full audience. Those are the green shoots of recovery you see globally. There are markets in the US where it is almost back to normal. So, we are almost back to pre-pandemic levels (in sports tourism) globally,” said Parker.