United target India to secure world domination

Chief executive reveals plans to tap into huge market with the possibility of a tour there next summer

• Paul Kelso and Randeep Ramesh
• The Guardian,
• Friday July 25 2008
• Article history

Manchester United will turn their attention to India as they seek to expand their commercial interests. The country represents one of the last significant untapped markets for football in the world and United's chief executive, David Gill, said yesterday that the club would be making a concerted effort to capitalise on the popularity of the Premier League on the subcontinent.

Speaking during United's pre-season tour of South Africa, Gill said gaining a commercial foothold in India was a priority as they seek to retain their position as the richest club in England. As a first step United are likely to play a friendly in India, perhaps as soon as next summer.

"India is interesting. We have been approached to go there and we are looking at some soccer school opportunities there. We would not rule out going there," he said. "They do have ambitions and have a key goal to make it to the World Cup. Whether they can make it or not I do not know, but it's a huge, huge country."

United blazed a trail for Premier League clubs seeking to expand into foreign markets and recent overseas tours have taken them to Japan, South Korea, China and Saudi Arabia, and on their way back from South Africa they will stop in Nigeria to play Portsmouth on Sunday.

Gill said the club would continue to use such tours to protect their position as the market leader. "The interest in football around the world is increasing. It is not saturated," he said. "We have worked on our global position for many years but it would be wrong to think that we are impregnable. If we did that then we would get knocked off our perch."

United have already held scouting tournaments in Goa, but Gill is not the first Premier League chief executive to have his head turned by the economic potential of India. Chelsea's Peter Kenyon has gone there twice in the past two years to explore the possibilities, Tottenham Hotspur this year held discussions about playing a friendly in Bengal, and Everton have run coaching schemes in India.

The Premier League also run schemes, including the Magic Bus project for street children in Mumbai, and Premier Skills, a sports and education project launched in Delhi last year in association with the British Council. Bayern Munich played in Kolkata in May in front of 120,000 supporters, prompting Mark van Bommel to compare the atmosphere to Barcelona's Camp Nou, and Ramón Calderón, president of Real Madrid, is in negotiations with the Indian sports minister, MS Gill, about staging a game. They discussed the idea at Wimbledon this month and have exchanged letters on the subject.

The success of cricket's inaugural Indian Premier League, which generated close to $2bn (£1bn) from a standing start in six months thanks largely to a $1bn TV deal with Sony, has confirmed that India's rapidly expanding middle class represents a huge commercial opportunity. That competition was based in part on the football model and the Premier League is already a popular commodity in India. ESPN Star currently holds the rights and, although the total value of the contract is worth less to the Premier League than Hong Kong or Scandinavia, it doubled in value during the last round of TV rights negotiations.

The growing craze for football has seen audiences leap and almost 60m tuned in to watch last season's Premier League, up from 42m the previous year. Although many of last month's Euro 2008 matches were shown in the early hours in India, Philippe Le Floc'h, marketing director of Uefa, had predicted that "India [would] be among the biggest viewers of Euro 2008 football outside Europe".

The 2006 World Cup signalled India's romance with football when a month's games notched up a television audience of 627m. Every newspaper in India now reports regularly on English football and Cristiano Ronaldo and Frank Lampard are familiar figures. English clubs are slowly building a fan base on the back of the league's television popularity, and Manchester United and Chelsea shirts are a not-uncommon sight in Kolkata. There is domestic entrepreneurial interest in the domestic game too, with Vijay Mallya, owner of the Force India F1 team and the Royal Challengers Bangalore IPL franchise, sponsoring two clubs in Kolkata.

Ten Sports and ESPN Star Sports are currently in a bidding war to broadcast the 2010 World Cup, with the winner likely to pay more than £20m, at least four times what was paid in 2006.

While Mumbai and Delhi have provided the new middle-class audience who see support of an English Premier League side as a must-have social accessory, local football teams have flourished in pockets of the country such as Bengal and Kerala and are attracting a broad base of support. A local derby in Bengal this year attracted more than 100,000 fans.

The domestic competition has been reformed as the I-League with a 12-team premier division. There is corporate sponsorship from business barons and a number of tie-ups with English clubs looking for new talent and, more importantly, a new fanbase. Wolverhampton Wanderers are among the clubs with relationships with Indian clubs.

India's national side, however, continue to struggle and currently languish at 153 in Fifa's world rankings, between Luxembourg and Tajikistan. India did qualify for the 1950 World Cup finals in Brazil but could not appear because the team still played barefoot. Now managed by an Englishman, Bob Houghton, a former Fulham player, last month they lost to the Maldives. There are many arguments as to why India cannot produce a decent national side. Some say that the tropical heat and widespread malnutrition hinder young players' physical development and spread lethargy. Others blame corruption within the football bureaucracy.

There is a parallel to be drawn with football's status in China in the early 90s, where television was the decisive factor in spreading the game. It was only when the Premier League started to be broadcast in China and televisions were widely privately owned that the game took off. Now Chinese players are part of English football. If United pursue their Indian ambitions seriously, an Indian national appearing in the Premier League will become a certainty.