BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODOLOGY II

TERM III PROJECT

Has commercial sporting events (like IPL, ISL, PKL, PBL etc.) motivated people
towards sports?

Submitted by
Group 11 Sec-B:
M072-18 Anubhav Raj
M082-18 Deepshekhar Bajoria
M083-18 Desai Pushya Hemal
M109-18 Sagar Raj Singh
F006-18 Syed Abdullah Ashraf
 Table of Contents

S. No. Content Page No.

1. Introduction 2

2. MDP & MRP 3

3. Research Design 4

4. Analysis & Findings 5-16

5. Conclusion & Managerial Implications 17

6. Limitations 18

7. Appendix
-Questionnaire 19-22
-Depth Interview Transcript 23-24

1
 INTRODUCTION

The explosion of shiny, new franchise-based leagues in India, since the inception of the IPL in
2008, has undeniably put money in players’ pockets across sports. But their emergence is more
than just about financial reward.
The money is not the main issue, it is about recognition and respect, This is the first time
something like this is happening with our sport., As two-month leagues sprouted, with each
sport seeking desperately to improve in profile, corporate India saw an opportunity in areas
outside cricket. These competitions have enjoyed varying degrees of success. The ProKabaddi
League has been a sensation; the Indian Super League, it now seems, will shape the future of
domestic competition; and the HIL sees the world’s best players in action. Badminton, in its
two avatars (IBL and PBL), has also managed to attract some of the sport’s top-ranked
professionals.
What, though, is the impact of these leagues on Indian players and the sport in general? It
cannot be disputed that the ISL — whatever the quality of play — has exposed Indian football
to a new level of professionalism.
Even to a player as established as Rupinderpal, success in the HIL — he was declared ‘Player
of the Tournament’ — made a big difference. “A lot has changed after the HIL. I didn’t imagine
that so many people watched hockey,” he said.
However, it is the PKL that is, arguably, the greatest success story among all these. It has
changed the face of kabaddi. According to TV viewership figures released by BARC, the PKL
has shown a cumulative growth of 51% over its four seasons. The impact on the popularity of
the Kabaddi World Cup was palpable.
A tournament hitherto forgotten was given a fresh lease of life. The World Cup, held in October
in Ahmedabad, received total TV viewership of 114 million according to BARC, with the final
registering a staggering 20.3 million impressions. The PKL flourished because of how it was
packaged, produced and broadcast on TV. Two seasons in a single calendar year originally felt
like overkill but it did not seem to subdue the interest in the World Cup.
What the long-term impact of these leagues will be, though, remains to be seen, for they are all
just a few editions old. The ISL, for all its glamour and high professional standards, is only a
two-month tournament. There may be gains for players involved in it now, but the competition
has done little to improve the standard of Indian football in general. A lot rests on how the
AIFF handles the proposed merger between the ISL and the I-League.
How successful these events are will be determined by how relevant they are able to remain.
There is an undoubted benefit for current players like Harjeet, but the futures of the sports
themselves are far from secure. With these thoughts in our mind we came up with following
MDP and MRPs:

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 Management Decision Problem (MDP):
Has commercial sporting events (like IPL, ISL, PKL, PBL etc.) motivated people towards
sports?
Marketing Research Problem (MRP):
1. Determine the relationship of people with sports before the commercialisation stage.

RQ1: Which sports were you following/playing before large-scale commercialisation?

RQ2: Which factors influenced you towards following these sports?
RQ3: What effect did the sports personalities have on your knowledge of sports?

2. Determine the change in perception of people towards sports with the onset of
commercialization.

RQ1: How do you see commercialization as a move in promoting sports?

RQ2: Which sports are you following/playing now?
RQ3: Has your level of engagement changed after commercialization?

3. Determine the demographics of people associated with sports before and after
commercialization.

RQ1: Has the sporting preferences of genders changed since the advent of commercialization?
RQ2: Have different age-groups started following sports?
RQ3: Has the representation/viewership of different sports from different regions changed?

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 RESEARCH DESIGN

Exploratory research helps determine the best research design, data collection method, and
selection of subjects.

Conclusive research is meant to provide information that is useful in reaching conclusions or

decision-making. It tends to be quantitative in nature, meaning it is in the form of numbers that
can be quantified and summarized.

We have used both Exploratory and Conclusive Research Design for successful completion
of our project on the above-mentioned MDP.

As a part of the exploratory research, we conducted a depth interview with Mr. Vicky Saurabh,
Manager at HDFC Bank, Ranchi, and a sports enthusiast. The transcript of the interview has
been attached in the Appendix. The insights drawn from this interview helped us a lot in
structuring our conclusive (descriptive) research as we could introduce relevant questions in
our questionnaire for the purpose of the survey. During the interview, Mr. Saurabh talked about
how the sporting arena is slowly becoming gender neutral as we see women taking part in
different sports beginning with the different leagues in the country. He also talked about the
excitement among different age groups, which can be seen ever since the onset of various
sporting leagues. He stated that commercialization has had an effect on sports in different
regions. Also, we discussed the recent Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul episode and whether this
is an effect of commercial leagues or not.

From the interview, we could structure our research questions accordingly across different
domains affected by Commercialization.

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 ANALYSIS & FINDINGS

Marketing Research Problem (MRP):

1) Determine the relationship of people with sports before the
commercialisation stage.
RQ1: Which sports were you following/playing before large-scale commercialization?

Sports Current Before %age

Cricket 63 78 -19.2%
Football 15 28 -46.4%
Tennis 2 3 -33.3%
Badminton 35 25 40.0%
Athletics 2 2 0.0%
Kabbadi 6 9 -33.3%
Volleyball 12 7 71.4%
Working out 1 1 0.0%
Basketball 3 2 50.0%
Lawn Tennis 1 1 0.0%
Swimming 1 1 0.0%

Sports: Before & After Commercialisation

90
78
80
70 63
60
50
40 35
28 Current
30 25
15 Before
20 12
10 6 9 7
2 3 2 2 1 1 3 2 1 1 1 1
0

Figure 1: Sports: Before and After Commercialisation

Interpretation: Before the advent of commercialisation, it is very evident from the above-
presented data that Cricket was very extensively followed with 78 out of 114 participants
responding so. It is followed by football with 28 participants agreeing so which also provides
it a minor lead over Badminton which is at number three with 25 participants. This also can be
interpreted as before commercialisation these 3 sports were followed by a staggering 85% of
the respondents.

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RQ2: Which factors influenced you towards following these sports?

Factors before Commercialisation

7
30
65

17

26

42

Passion Health Leisure Patriotism Soorts Personalites Other

Before Commercialisation, the major factors that attracted people towards sports can be
inferred from the above-drawn Pie chart:

1. Passion for Sports

2. Health
3. Role of Sports Personalities

We did PCA analysis on metric factors we derived from questions wherein we asked
respondents to rate their awareness, encouragement, role of personalities and other factors on
the scale of 1-7(Least Likely to Highly Likely) and did a PCA on the given data to come up
with the following results to majorly come up with the factors after commercialisation.

KMO and Bartlett's Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. .645

Approx. Chi-Square 76.866

Bartlett's Test of Sphericity df 10

Sig. .000

As may be seen from KMO and Bartlett’s test, there is sampling adequacy to go for Factor
Analysis and Bartlett’s test rejects the null hypothesis that the correlation matrix is an identity
matrix.

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 Total Variance Explained

Component Initial Eigenvalues Extraction Sums of Squared Rotation Sums of Squared

Loadings Loadings

Total % of Cumulativ Total % of Cumulativ Total % of Cumulativ

Variance e% Variance e% Variance e%

1 1.990 39.800 39.800 1.990 39.800 39.800 1.983 39.660 39.660

2 1.016 20.323 60.123 1.016 20.323 60.123 1.023 20.463 60.123
3 .964 19.271 79.394
4 .620 12.401 91.796
5 .410 8.204 100.000

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

From Extraction, the number of factors is reduced to 2 factors as shown below:

Component Score Coefficient Matrix

Component

1 2

10) How likely do famous

sports personalities play a .363 .130
role in promoting sports?
11) Have your guardians
encouraged you to play
.150 .151
professional sports before
commercialization?
12) How likely are you to
encourage your near and
.404 -.140
dear ones to play
professional sports?
13) How effective are the
commercialization leagues
.434 -.063
in motivating people towards
sports?
Are you aware of popular
sporting leagues happening -.028 .958
in India?

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
From rotation Component score matrix, these factors/components can be named as:
1. Motivational Factors
2. Awareness factors

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RQ3: What effect did the sports personalities have on your knowledge of sports?

In the questionnaire, we asked questions along the lines of factors which kept people associated
with sports in the pre-commercialisation era and the role of sports personalities in promoting
sports.

As the data we collected from these questions were categorical in nature, we analyzed it using
Cross-tabulation. The results are shown below:

Interpretation: 26.5% of the total respondents (113) felt that sports personalities were an
important factor in keeping them associated with sports. More than 93% of these respondents
felt that sports personalities played an important role in promoting sports.
Another important interpretation from the above results is that even among the 73.5%
respondents who did not believe that sports personalities were an important factor in keeping
them associated with sports, about 67% still felt that important sports personalities have
promoted sports.

2) Determine the change in perception of people towards sports with the

onset of commercialization.

RQ1: How do you see commercialization as a move in promoting sports?

Model Summaryb
Model R R Square Adjusted R Std. Error of Durbin-
Square the Estimate Watson
1 .537a .289 .282 1.472 1.636
a. Predictors: (Constant), 13) How effective are the commercialisation
leagues in motivating people towards sports?

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b. Dependent Variable: 12) How likely are you to encourage your near and
dear ones to play professional sports?
ANOVAa
Model Sum of df Mean Square F Sig.
Squares
Regression 97.626 1 97.626 45.032 .000b
1 Residual 240.639 111 2.168
Total 338.265 112
a. Dependent Variable: 12) How likely are you to encourage your near and dear
ones to play professional sports?
b. Predictors: (Constant), 13) How effective are the commercialisation leagues in
motivating people towards sports?

Coefficientsa
Model Unstandardized Standardized t Sig.
Coefficients Coefficients
B Std. Error Beta
(Constant) 1.941 .494 3.927 .000
13) How effective are
1 the commercialisation
.603 .090 .537 6.711 .000
leagues in motivating
people towards sports?
a. Dependent Variable: 12) How likely are you to encourage your near and dear ones to play
professional sports?

Interpretation: From the above result of regression between ‘how likely a respondent is to
encourage my near and dear one and how effective commercialisation league in motivating
people towards sports’, we find that there is a positive linear relationship between them which
in turn indicates that the respondents are more likely to encourage their near and dear one if
they perceive that commercial leagues have positively motivated the people towards sports.

RQ2: Which sports are you following/playing now?

Interpretation: Referring to Figure 1, after commercialisation these figures dropped to 82%.

Moreover, previously unnoticed sports like Badminton, Volleyball, and Basketball had an
increase in its viewership as compared to its data before commercialisation. Especially
Badminton following has increased by 40% and volleyball by 71%.

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RQ3: Has your level of engagement changed after commercialization?

In the questionnaire, we asked questions about how often they played/followed sports before
and after commercialisation.

As the data we collected from these questions were categorical in nature, we analyzed it using
Cross-tabulation. The results are shown below:

Interpretation: As can be seen from the above-presented data, before commercialisation 23

respondents were following/playing sports monthly of which only 10 now remain in this
category, 6 moves to the weekly category and 6 moves to none of the above category. Out of
10 respondents in the fortnightly category pre-commercialisation era, only 5 remain in this
category, 3 moves to monthly category and 1 each move to daily and weekly category
respectively.

3) Determine the demographics of people associated with sports before and

after commercialization.

RQ1: Has the sporting preferences of genders changed since the advent of
commercialization?

In the questionnaire, we asked questions along the lines of the gender of the respondents and
how often they played/followed sports before and after commercialisation.

As the data we collected from these questions were categorical in nature, we analyzed it using
Cross-tabulation. The results are shown below:

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Interpretation: Before commercialisation, 36% of the Female respondents felt detached from
sports, which have now decreased to 25.6%. However, earlier 9.5% of the male respondents
felt detached from sports which has now increased to 13.5%. The monthly engagement of
female respondents has increased from 25.6% to 38.5% which somehow shows that seasonal
engagement has increased among female respondents. This can be attributed to commercial
leagues like IPL, ISL, PKL etc

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RQ2: Have different age-groups started following sports?

In the questionnaire, we asked questions along the lines of the age group of the respondents
and how often they played/followed sports before and after commercialisation.

As the data we collected from these questions were categorical in nature, we analyzed it using
Cross-tabulation. The results are shown below:

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Interpretation: Before commercialisation, 20.6% respondents in the age group 20-29 felt detached
from sports which have now decreased to 17.6% Across age groups, people following sports on a
monthly basis before commercialisation were 20.4% which has now increased considerably to
around 28%. However, as an unlikely event, the overall respondents following sports on a daily
basis have decreased with the onset of commercialisation.

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RQ3: Has the representation/viewership of different sports from different regions changed?

Interpretation: As we can see that across regions there is a considerable sample among the
respondents who feel that commercialisation has changed the sporting landscape of their
region. Specifically, in the Eastern region, we see that 76.2% of the respondents feel that
commericialisation has changed the sporting landscape of their region.

For Eastern Region, we have done an additional analysis on Excel showing the sports that we
followed before commercialisation and how this changed:

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 Sports Before Current
Cricket 16 14
Football 6 3
Shooting 0 0
Tennis 1 0
Badminton 4 8
Athletics 1 0
Kabaddi 1 3
Volleyball 3 2
Working out 0 0
Basketball 0 0
Lawn Tennis 0 0
Swimming 0 0
Table Tennis 0 0

Before Current

Cricket Football Tennis Cricket Football Tennis

Badminton Athletics Kabbadi Badminton Athletics Kabbadi
Volleyball Volleyball

Figure 2: Sports followed before and after commercialization in the Eastern Region of India

Interpretation: It can be clearly seen that sports like Badminton and Kabaddi have eaten up on
the share earlier held by Cricket and Football in the region due to the leagues like PBL and
PKL.

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Cluster Analysis

We have performed Two step clustering which segmented the entire respondent data into 2
clusters, one who felt Commercialisation was effective in motivating people towards sports
while others where people felt they were less effective.

The cluster that felt commercial leagues were motivating people also seemed aware of different
leagues happening across India and was the cluster that would encourage their near and dear
ones to join sports.

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 CONCLUSION

• With the above research, we tried to infer the effects that Commercialisation had on the
respondents’ mind
• We found that respondent’s behavior towards factors like encouraging their near and
dear ones towards joining sports increased considerably with an increase in the
awareness of different sporting leagues
• Respondents have also started following different sports like Badminton, Kabaddi, etc
along with the traditionally followed sports like cricket
• Their engagement too has increased. Especially among the female population, where
we could see females who were earlier not following sports now started following them
on a monthly basis. This data also makes us believe that they have started following
commercial leagues
• The inclusion on Age-group changed slightly post commercialisation

MANAGERIAL IMPLICATION

• Our MDP, where we sought whether commercial leagues have motivated people
towards sports, seems to have been answered positively from our results
• Although monthly, fortnightly engagement seems to have increased as fewer
respondents now feel detached from sports, there were certain groups that have reduced
their sports consumption frequency after commercialisation
• Commercialisation has played an important role in making sports gender and age
neutral. It also encouraged people to play/follow different sports in different regions.

If a new sporting league desires to spring up in the existing ecosystem, the data
and analysis show that there could be an increase in engagement among different
gender and age groups. However, this may not necessarily be ground-breaking
and might not fetch a very rosy response. So, the organizers of such events should
weigh the pros and cons before trying to fill up sporting league gaps.

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 LIMITATIONS

• During collection, we felt it would be easier to collect Categorical data but on the
analysis, we found out that most of the analytical tools were applicable to Metric data

• In our pursuit to incorporate a variety of respondents, we ended up losing substantial

data of some type and even minute changes in the data had a huge impact on the overall
analysis

• Demographic dividend could not be captured in our project as all age groups and
genders did not have equal representation. This is generally a drawback of academic
projects like this

• We observed that the respondents showed randomness while choosing to answer the
questions

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 APPENDIX

QUESTIONNAIRE

19
20
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 Transcript of the Depth Interview with Mr. Vicky Saurabh

Name: Mr. Vicky Saurabh

Sex: Male
Age: 35 years
Profession: Assistant Manager, HDFC Bank
Location: Ranchi
Little more about him: An avid follower of Cricket and Badminton. Played both sports during
the college days. Tries to keep abreast with the sports via the online channels and social media
if not possible to watch on TV. Sachin Tendulkar and Brett Lee were his favorite players during
childhood.
Vicky Saurabh used to follow cricket and Badminton from his childhood days. He watched the
famous Cooch Behar U-19 match, which made both Yuvraj and Dhoni famous, live from the
ground. Hence, we found him as the most ideal participant for our Depth interview where we
intended to find the effect of Commercialization of Sporting leagues on Sports.
Major points covered during the interview:
Initially, he recollects that the non-commercial leagues like Ranji Trophy too were not given
the same coverage that they are being given today. Only the finals would be telecasted.
What are the effects of Commercialization on sports? Good, Bad or Ugly?
A mixture of all! The sporting league has produced talents but at the same time, there’s
involvement of huge sums of money. This has led to a few scandals and corruptions like the
Rajasthan Royal’s players involvement in spot-fixing during the 2013 IPL. These scandals were
present earlier too, late 20th Century saw infamous match-fixing scandals involving South
African and Indian stars. So, there has been corruption even before the commercialization and
has only been aggravated by media now.
“Positives from these leagues weigh more than the negatives” - Vicky
“Talent pool has increased considerably post-commercialization. Earlier there were few
Sachins, Dravids and Gangulys. Then came the era post fixing scandals that saw Sehwag,
Bhajji, Yuvi, Zaheer and Kaif. But after IPL there is almost a parallel team running with
similar substitutes available for each player” - Vicky
Which sport did you add to your bucket list after its commercialization?
Kabaddi. The kind of slot it was given on TV during prime time and also the fact that every
Indian could relate to it made me a fan of the game post PKL.
IPL is the world leader in terms of cricket leagues. Same is not the case with ISL. Therefore, it
is not of the same level as major European leagues. It is trying to spread the game but it’s
difficult as matches in Delhi are played to almost empty stands. In terms of talent, ISL too is

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producing a few players. India made it to the Asia cup and performed well. Also, it is ranked
under 100 after a long time.
“Lack of infrastructure in many regions is a hindrance to these leagues in Football and
hockey” - Vicky
Women’s cricket too has picked up the pace in India but there’s a long way before women’s
IPL of similar scale becomes a reality. Women’s league in Australia, WBBL has become a huge
success.
Women also have started to play cricket and be attracted to the sport post-IPL era. Lack of
media coverage and difference in pay-scale is a major hindrance in Women sports in India.
Dipa Karmarkar stated, give us the necessary infrastructure and we’ll give you 100 Olympians
only from the NE region. Infrastructure is a major hindrance in NE coming to the fore in cricket
and other sports.
Similarly, football and hockey have become region specific and even Commercial leagues are
not able to draw attention from other regions.
Has commercialization affected discipline of certain players?
The Hardik Pandya issue was discussed. But, Vicky felt that it is more about staying disciplined
as individuals. Through the commercial leagues, many players have become stars overnight and
have slipped in the process. Hardik Pandya kind of issue is bound to happen but they will learn
from these and not repeat these in the future.
In the end, he mentioned that commercialization has more positives than negatives and have
attracted people to join/follow sports but Infrastructure needs to be ramped up in many regions
to ensure more participation in different sports.

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