The owners of Blackburn Rovers, Venky’s, have taken a defiant stance insisting that they love the club, that it is not for sale and they will not walk away. if they did sell at present they would be unlikely to get their money back. They claim that the club will bounce straight back to the Premier League, but it may not be that easy.
The owners of Blackburn Rovers, Venky’s, have taken a defiant stance insisting that they love the club, that it is not for sale and they will not walk away. if they did sell at present they would be unlikely to get their money back. They claim that the club will bounce straight back to the Premier League, but it may not be that easy.
All this raises the question of whether it has done them any good in India. At the time of the purchase it was justified by hopes of developing a loyal following there. Cricket is massive in India, but football is the next most popular sport, at least in terms of followers rather than supporters or participants. The Premier League attracted 60 million viewers last season, equivalent to the population of the UK.
However, few of them have turned to wearing Blackburn Rovers tops, in part because of the poor performance on the pitch. Leading Indian football journalist Siddhanth Aney told The Times, ‘Most people in India who follow the English Premier League tend to follow the big four – and especially Manchester United.’
I can confirm this anecdotally. An Indian friend of mine gets very upset when Manchester United fail to progress and she made the pilgrimage to Old Trafford when she was visiting England. Indians like to follow a team that does well and Rovers supporters are largely confined to Pune, Venky’s home town.
Do people in India care about Venky’s and Blackburn Rovers? Kadambari Murali, sports editor of the Hindustan Times, commented: ‘When they bought the club there was a lot of excitement in India – partly from a sense of skewed nationalism about an Indian group buying a Premier League club. But since then I’ve not really since that much interest.’
Siddhanth Aney criticised Venky’s for making no effort to promote the club and having no clear marketing strategy. All they effectively did was stage a disapponting exhibition match between Blackburn and Pune FC last year.
Venky’s have also been criticised for not investing in Indian football. Subrata Dutta, a vice-president of the All India Football Federation, said that he would have preferred the company to have invested in Pune FC.
India’s status as an emerging economic and political power, courted by the US and Britain, has given its business elites a new confidence. That confidence may be misplaced when it comes to running a football club in England.