MAM
Sports industry spending exceeds Rs 9,500 cr in 2021: GroupM report
Mumbai: The year 2021 saw a resounding comeback for sports sponsorships and media deals, as compared to 2020 when the pandemic took over. The size of the Indian sports industry spending is estimated to have surpassed Rs 9,500 crore last year, according to the latest sports sponsorship report released by GroupM India’s entertainment, e-sports and sports division GroupM ESP.
With Rs 6,018 crore, sports advertisement expenditure (adex) surpassed 2019 levels in both TV and digital. Cricket yet again, remains the most popular sport, accounting for 94 per cent of the sports adex. The media spending on cricket in 2021 was higher (Rs 5,657 crore) than the overall media spends of 2019 (Rs 5,232 crore).
The ninth edition of Sporting Nation in The Making – GroupM ESP’s sports report takes into consideration the sponsorship spends, player endorsements and media spends on sports properties. The spending on sports celebrity endorsement grew by 11 per cent year-on-year in 2021, says the report. A total of 444 brand endorsement deals have happened in 2021, with cricketers accounting for 318 endorsement deals and 87 per cent of total brand endorsement value. The Olympic Year of 2021 increased emerging sports athletes’ endorsements by 79 per cent, accounting for 13 per cent of the overall brand endorsement value, as per the report.
2021 got our sporting nation back to a billion-dollar scale with a 62 per cent growth over 2020, the report said. India’s performance at the Tokyo Olympics has been a morale booster for budding sports talent in the country and 2022 will bring new opportunities in multi-sport events.
The household penetration of TV sets in different markets over the country saw a major role in the growth of sports properties. With this, TV continues to be the largest medium since 2021 saw overall ad spends of Rs 5,051 crore, which was a growth of 59 per cent over 2020 and we saw digital spends touching Rs 965 crore.
“2021 was a year of a major comeback for the sports industry. Not only in sports but we saw growth in sponsorships, endorsements, and media expenses in 2021,” remarked GroupM South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar. “This year will also be a good re-start point for brands to invest in sports properties since sports will see a rise and will in-turn deliver ROI to brands.”
“We even saw e-sports gaining significant traction and there was a major rise in the number of gamers in the country. Properties like PKL, ISL, etc. are also seeing a major rise in followers which goes to show that India is heavily invested in overall sports from an interest and inquisitiveness standpoint. As for cricket, we are seeing a growing interest by foreign private equity giants investing in Indian cricket which is proving that cricket will continue seeing a huge surge in India and with 2021 getting cricket back on track, we are seeing 2022 racing ahead, aiming to cross Rs 10,000 crore mark,” Kumar further said.
Acceptance of visual media for live sports broadcast by fans led to a great demand of platforms like SonyLiv and Disney+ Hotstar who are now streaming a variety of sports for their audiences, says GroupM. The study finds the OTT space becoming more competitive in the years to come since India is adopting OTT for live streaming sporting action.
“India as a sporting nation has finally arrived, overcoming all barriers brought in by the pandemic,” stated GroupM South Asia head – sports, entertainment and e-sports Vinit Karnik. “Cricket being the hero of India, contributed 88 per cent of the sports spends. IPL and T20 WC boosted the sports adex growth. We also saw emerging sports contributing 12 per cent on the overall sports spends. The media spends in 2021 were the biggest contributors, who accounted for almost two-thirds of all sports industry spending.”
“While sports celebrity endorsement was on the rise in 2021, Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma, Neeraj Chopra and PV Sindhu are the top athletes in the sports celebrity brand endorsement space. 2022 will be an exciting year with the Asian Games, Fifa World Cup, Premier Badminton League, and many more properties coming up, and the fans are in for a treat. The sports arena is an exciting drive ahead from the fanbase lens and the business lens too and we have a host of opportunities in the Indian sports industry,” he added.
With an action-packed 2021, media spends in sports saw some heavy scoring in India as brands and consumers were brought closer by broadcasters and technology also played a very crucial role in evolving the way people appreciate sports, according to GroupM.
Brands
Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
