Sports
Dream Sports Foundation partners Premier League for youth football
Workshops, masterclasses to boost coaches at Goa event from 3–14 May.
MUMBAI: India’s football dreams are getting a Premier touch and this time, it’s the coaches taking centre stage. Dream Sports Foundation (DSF), the development arm of Dream Sports, has partnered with the Premier League for the upcoming Dream Sports Championship, scheduled to be held in Goa from 3 to 14 May. The collaboration marks a strategic push to strengthen grassroots football by focusing not just on players, but the people shaping them on the sidelines.
The partnership will see the Premier League conduct a series of coach-development workshops and masterclasses during the tournament, as well as within the AIFF Under-16 Junior League ecosystem. The sessions will cover training methodology, match management, physical conditioning, sports psychology and leadership—bringing global best practices into India’s evolving academy structure.
This move builds on DSF’s role as the Official Youth Development Partner of the All India Football Federation (AIFF), with the initiative designed to plug long-standing gaps in coaching infrastructure and knowledge exchange.
By working closely with academies, clubs and support staff, both organisations are aiming to create a more structured and globally aligned development pathway—where young players benefit from better-trained mentors as much as competitive exposure.
Neel Shah, CEO, Dream Sports Foundation, said the initiative reflects a dual focus on player and coach development, adding that meaningful exposure to international standards is key to unlocking India’s footballing potential.
Premier League India managing director Hrishikesh Shende noted that the league’s growing presence in India including its Mumbai office has been centred on grassroots development, with partnerships like this helping translate global expertise into local impact.
As Indian football continues its slow but steady climb, the message is clear, better coaches today could mean better players tomorrow and perhaps, a stronger showing on the world stage in the years to come.
Sports
KKR takes Korbo, Lorbo, Jeetbo across India in seven languages this IPL season
From a four-storey mural in Kolkata to team buses in Chennai and Ahmedabad, KKR is turning a cricket campaign into a cultural one
KOLKATA: Kolkata Knight Riders have never been shy about making noise. This IPL season, they are making it in seven languages.
The franchise has rolled out one of the more ambitious branding exercises of the TATA IPL 2026 season, combining a sprawling outdoor campaign in its home city with a travelling multilingual initiative that takes the team’s iconic slogan, Korbo, Lorbo, Jeetbo, into the regional language of every away city it plays in.
In Kolkata, the campaign is impossible to miss. More than 75,000 square feet of outdoor space has been commandeered across the city, encompassing 65 billboards at key locations, branded pillars and pole kiosks along major routes, LED boards and metro branding. The centrepiece is a hand-painted mural across the full face of a four-storey building on Rashbehari Avenue near Bijan Setu. Inspired by the theme Prothom Bhalobasha KKR, meaning “first love” in Bengali, the mural features players Varun Chakravarthy, Ajinkya Rahane and Rinku Singh alongside the franchise’s famous rallying cry. It has already become a fan pilgrimage site, drawing crowds and generating considerable traction on social media.
Beyond Kolkata, KKR is doing something rather cleverer. As the team travels for away fixtures, its team bus carries the franchise slogan translated into the local language of each host city. The campaign began in Mumbai ahead of KKR’s first away game on 29th March, with the Marathi adaptation on display. Over the course of the season, the initiative will span seven cities and seven languages: Marathi in Mumbai, Tamil in Chennai, Gujarati in Ahmedabad, Hindi in Lucknow and Delhi, Telugu in Hyderabad, and Chhattisgarhi in Raipur.
Binda Dey, chief marketing officer of Knight Riders Sports, was candid about what the campaign is trying to achieve. “This season, we wanted to go beyond visibility and create moments of genuine cultural connection for our fans,” she said. “When fans in Chennai see Korbo, Lorbo, Jeetbo in Tamil, or fans in Ahmedabad see it in Gujarati, we want that to feel like a moment of recognition, not just advertising. Combined with our outdoor campaign in Kolkata that gives us mass visibility in our home market, we’re building a campaign that is as much about identity and pride as it is about cricket.”
The branding push sits alongside a wider set of fan engagement initiatives this season, including Knights Unplugged 3.0, the VIDA Knights Electrifying Box Cricket tournament and fan meet-ups across cities.
KKR, it is worth remembering, is not merely a cricket team. The Knight Riders brand spans four franchises across four countries, with nine trophies between them, including three IPL titles in 2012, 2014 and 2024. It is one of the more commercially sophisticated operations in world T20 cricket, and this campaign reflects that instinct precisely. In a sport where every franchise is chasing the same eyeballs, KKR has decided that the smartest way to stand out is not to shout louder, but to speak in the right tongue. Seven cities, seven languages, one battle cry. The purple and gold, it turns out, travels rather well.
