Title: What makes sports leagues successful? A study on Indian professional sports leagues

Authors: Sanjeev Tripathi; Ankur Kapoor

Addresses: Indian Institute of Management Indore, Prabandh Shikhar, Rau-Pitampur Road, Rau Indore – 453-556 (M.P.), India ' IIM Ahmedabad, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad – 380015, Gujarat, India

Abstract: Professional sports leagues have become the dominant form of sports in most of the developed sports markets. However, sports leagues are appearing for the first time in emerging sports markets like India. This research is exploratory in nature and is aimed at identifying the factors that contribute to the success of Indian professional sports leagues. A mixed methods approach was adopted using semi-structured interviews, focused group discussions, and surveys. Data was collected from sports' experts and fans. The results show that factors that impact success of leagues can be of broadly summarised into two types: operational factors like league-federation relationship, scheduling and infrastructure; and fan acceptability factors like celebrities, quality of players, marketing communications and match-day experience. The findings from this research have implications for developing sports industry and research in emerging sports markets.

Keywords: sports leagues; sports marketing; fan acceptability; celebrities; match day experience; success factors.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICBM.2017.086089

International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 2017 Vol.15 No.2, pp.206 - 228

Received: 19 Feb 2016
Accepted: 09 Aug 2016

Published online: 24 Aug 2017 *

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