The World's Most Marketable Athletes

Sports Pro, a British-based sports and sports-business magazine, recently compiled a list of the 50 most marketable athletes in the world. Marketable - mind you, not best - because not only is it difficult to compare athletes in different sports (Leo Messi or LeBron James?) but some of the most talented athletes in the world couldn't sell water to a well (read: Tim Duncan).

Anyways, it is an interesting list, and this is how Sports Pro describes how they got to their conclusions:

The list comprises the 50 athletes deemed by SportsPro to offer value for marketing money if signed today to a long-term global endorsement deal.
As the sports landscape has shifted over the last 12 months, so has the make-up of these unique rankings. Clearly, when evaluating ‘potential’, a degree of subjectivity is involved. Nevertheless, myriad resources were consulted and contacts nigh-on interrogated.
As was the case last year, the list has been designed and compiled to shed light on where the value might lie across the industry, and as a basis for discussion – both a snapshot of the moment and a three-year forecast.

The top ten are:
1. Usain Bolt
2. LeBron James
3. Cristiano Ronaldo
4. Lionel Messi
5. Lewis Hamilton
6. Carmelo Anthony
7. Sebastian Vettel
8. Michael Phelps
9. Caroline Wozniacki
10. Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Here are some thoughts from the rest of the list, which you can check out in its entirety here:

Usain Bolt is #1 - partly because he's the fastest man on Earth, and partly because his last name is Bolt.

LeBron James was #1 on this list last year - no really, he was. Of course that list was named before he became Public Enemy #1 in the eyes everyone on the planet expect Miami Heat bandwaggoners after his 'Decision'. Still, #2 ain't half-bad.

The most marketable basketball players, in order, are LeBron James (2), Carmelo Anthony (6), Yao Ming (11), Kobe Bryant (13), Dwyane Wade (15), Kevin Durant (30), Deron Williams (48).

Yes, you read that right, Kobe Bryant is 13th - below LeBron, Carmelo, and Yao (!!!). I know Carmelo's Knicks move has been taken into consideration, but then why no Amar'e on this list? Why is Deron Williams there?

Why no Derrick Rose on this list? He plays for formerly the most marketable team ever, right.

Shaq?

I'm surprised Kevin Durant, despite all his talent, made it to 30. Personality-wise, he's about as marketable as white bread.

There are two Indians on the top-50 list, both cricketers: MS Dhoni, at an impressive 10th, and Yuvraj Singh, who just makes the cut at 49.

Which brings me to my next question: Where the zark is Sachin Tendulkar? He's a friggin God, you know? If every second advertisement on television isn't considered good marketing, then I don't know what is. I know he's old, but this guy is going to remain India's sure shot salesmen for everything from Visa cards to chocolate milk for the next three decades, at least.

What is most impressive that is the variety in the top 50 - 18 different sports are represented, including 7 racing drivers, 7 NBA players, and 6 football players.

Wow, racing car drivers are popular.

Ronaldo and Messi remain virtually inseparable - whether in talent, output in goals, league standings, and now, marketability.

I wasn't exactly sure why tennis star Caroline Wozniacki is so marketable, but then I saw this and I shut my mouth.

In addition, Sports Pro is doing a poll of the world's most marketable retired athletes too, a list that is headlined by Michael Jordan and Zinedine Zidane

A tale of three leagues

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It's a tale of three leagues, in three countries, of three sports.
1. National Basketball Association (NBA) - Basketball, USA
2. English Premier League (EPL) - Football, England
3. Indian Premier Leauge (IPL) - Cricket, India

India has a total of ONE succesful professional sports league: the IPL. ONE. Like it or hate it, but that's the truth. Hell, even many cricket purists hate it, disregarding the Twenty-20's format as 'real' cricket.

Whatever - we aren't here to argue about what cricket should be. We're here to talk about what the IPL wants to be. The IPL wants to be the NBA, and it has wanted to be the NBA for quite some time. It is no secret that the league format, the franchises, the cheerleaders, the dugout (or "bench"), the player profiles, the "strategic" time-outs, the advertising frenzy, the television broadcasts, etc in the IPL have borrowed heavily from the NBA and even the EPL. Sorry football fans, but in many ways financially, the IPL has actually overtaken the EPL. According to the inaugural Annual Review of Global Sports Salaries (ARGSS) (later published on sportingintelligence.com), IPL became the second highest paid league in the world this year, overtaking the EPL. You know what's it second to? The NBA.

Even NBA Commissioner/Tsar/Maharaja David Stern become a fan of the IPL last November. In an interview with DNA-Mumbai, Stern said, "We are closely watching as to how the IPL has been a game-changer in sport. It has adopted a number of Western sporting practices like the franchise system, player bidding, the home-and-away games, double-headers and the like."

Now, IPL may take yet another page out of the NBA book. After adding two new franchises to the existing eight in the IPL, the BCCI is looking to change its format to finish the tournament in the same seven-week period as the previous three IPL editions. Until IPL-3, each team played each other team twice, home and away, to play a total of 14 matches each, which meant that a grand total of 60 matches were played. If the same format is continued for 10 teams, 94 games would have to be played. The BCCI don't want that because they have a time constraint.

One of their options is to do with the NBA does: Divide the teams into two groups (NBA-read: Conferences) of five. Like the NBA, the teams in the same conference play each other three or four times, whereas teams in opposing conferences play each other twice, once home, and once away. Each team plays 82 games in the regular season. In the IPL, the proposition is that each team plays other teams in its groups twice (home and away) and the teams in the group once.

Good idea, but it does create problems. Home advantage is something that teams obviously rely on, so on what basis will the home games be played in the inter-group games?

The other idea I feel is worse, which is to have the same round-robin system in the two groups, and then the best teams move on to a 'Super Six' stage and they all play each other. With this format, there are many teams who may never get to play each other, and that completely defies the whole point of being a league.

My solution is this: screw the groups. Don't follow the NBA, follow the EPL. Have all teams play each other home AND away like the current system. Play 94 games. I can hear the groans already: there aren't enough days to fit these many games. Or the groans from TV broadcasters: we can't show more than one or two games a day because TV ratings will take a hit.

I don't see why the league can't be expanded to take a longer time. This way, it will become less of a quick tournament and more of a 'season'. Yes, international cricket clashes will cause a problem, but just like international breaks in the football season, the IPL can incorporate their season around cricket international breaks, too.

And it's fine to glamourise our leagues just as media has done it in the US, but their needs to be a limit, and that limit is crossed when the sport is overshadowed by celebrity and marketing culture. I searched for 'ipl' in Google-Images, and you know what I got? Three of the first four photos are of Katrina Kaif, Preity Zinta, and Shah Rukh Khan. The first cricketers don't show up till the eight pic. Even Vijay Mallaya scores earlier.

If we are truly looking to bring a sports league/season culture such as that in the USA, Europe, etc into India, our leagues have to be bigger, last longer, and be ABOUT THE SPORT. It is laughable that the second-richest league in the world lasts just seven weeks.

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Alexsander Bucan: Bringing in a foreign coach doesn't guarantee that the quality will improve

Krishnakumar KH from Express Buzz interviewed Alexsander Bucan, the head coach of the Indian Men's basketball team, during Coaches Coaching Clinic in Kochi a few weeks ago. Bucan, an experienced Serbian coach, has been in-charge of the Young Cagers for around two years. Here are some excerpts from that interview:

India, says Bucan, has the potential to bloom in the ‘simple’ business of getting through a maze of giant bodies to ram a huge ball through a basket raised high on a pole. Easier said than done, he accepts. But if China, Russia and Iran can do it, so can India, feels the affable Bu­can...

“The Russians and the Chinese are not the biggest of people,” he points out. “But they have tall players in their basketball and volleyball teams. That means they identified talent at an early age and put them through scientific training to produce world-class athletes. The same is possible in India.” But Bucan contends that producing world-class athletes requires an overhaul of the “amateurish system” in India. “It is professionalism that gets you results,” he says. “You need to begin early and find young talent with the right build. Then they need systematic training that includes fitness training, nutritional care and psychology sessions.” The Serb has no doubt India has the talent. “I ha­ve seen many talented players at the school and college levels in India. Some are more gifted th­an the national players. Sadly, most of them drop off the game to further their studies or go looki­ng for jobs. No one is rea­lly interested in leaving everything else behind and concentrating solely on the game.”

“There is no way the team can impro­ve without playing stro­ng opposition regularly,” he says. Further, Bucan is not one to boast without a blueprint — infrastructure, academies, age-gr­oup tournaments, camps, a professional national league at the senior level and cheering crowds.

“Just because you bring in a fo­reign coach, for any ga­me, there is no guarantee the quality will improve,” he says.

However, the national coach is quick to point out the improvement made by the cagers in the past few years. “There has been a big difference in standards in the past two years,” he says. “But the real difference can be made only with long-term strategies. Stress should be laid on the under-16 level to unearth players with potential.”
The most significant achievement during the past two years is the triumph of the Indian under-17 team at the 2008 Asian FIBA 33 championship — which allows just three players per team. It was the first time an Indian basketball team at any level had achieved such a feat. “We beat the Philippines, where basketball is as big as cricket in India,” says Bucan.
Regarding coaching, he feels it is tactical play that requires greater attention once the basics are in place. “We are far behind world-class standards in terms of contact play,” he says. “Also, there has to be more set play than what the players are used to here.”

Read the full article here.

What I found particularly interesting about this interview was Bucan's admittance that bringing in a foreign coach doesn't neccessarily guarantee an improvement. We Indians have historically had a niggling inferiority complex to foreigners, and this is true in sports, too: Gary Kirsten has managed to steadily improve the cricket team, but the credit for that should go to the captain MS Dhoni as much as the coach. Sure, it is neccessary for our coaches to learn new skills and techniques from around the world, but it is also important for the coach to know about local knowledge, playing styles, and conditions, to offer a holistic improvement of the team.

I also hate to say this, but in more cases than not, a positive fact about bringing in a foreign coach is that he or she is free from the political pressures and the corruption at every rung of the ladder that Indian coaches have to suffer through. This freedom tends to insinuate misunderstanding or jealousy amongst their local counterparts who are already used to a certain system, but in the end, the priority is to worry about a degree of professionalism in team selection and play.

The Cricket Delusion: How Indian basketball can learn from the recent field hockey debacle

Let me start with my thesis: Sport in India is a joke.

I write this article as I watch my favourite ever sportsmen devastate the Bangladesh bowling attack with another spectacular performance. He has just completed his 45th Test century (half a dozen more than his nearest competitor), and would go on to make a breathtaking 143 runs.



It’s been 20 years since Sachin Tendulkar first gripped India’s emotions as a talented 16-year-old, and up to this day, he remains in the eye of the Indian public the one untouchable, uniting figure in the country. Globally, he’s ranked as one of the greatest to ever play the game. I don’t exaggerate when I say that there has been no more unanimously loved Indian since that Gandhi character.

Sport can’t be a problem in India when an athlete is the nation’s more powerful icon, can it? Sport can’t be a problem when the Indian Premier League (IPL), a competition of cricket’s newest format, the Twenty-20, is Asia’s first billion dollar sporting league , and one of the richest sporting leagues around the world? Of the top-10 most earning cricketers in the world, spots 1-4 and 6 are occupied by Indians. Number one is the captain of our national cricket team, MS Dhoni, and although his 2009 earnings of approximately 10 million USD are Lilliputian compared to the amount of money that superstar athletes make in other sports worldwide, these cricketers aren’t exactly fighting to feed their kids.

How can sport be a problem when India is ranked the number 1 Test Cricket team in the world? How can sport be a problem when our cricketers are as famous as our much-revered film stars? How can I call sport a joke in India, when millions keep their eyes glued to their TV sets, the housewives offering prayers to our pick of a hundred thousand gods for another victory, the fathers ditching work and the sons ditching school to sit home and watch another India international cricket match?

The problem, obviously, is the fact that all the glorious stories and figures in India belong to cricket, and if we do strike lucky and succeed in another sport, the successes are either quickly forgotten, or the newspapers find it tough to squeeze in the news amongst the barrage of daily cricket stories that the Indian audiences are overdosed with.

There are, of course, a few exceptions. Field Hockey, officially our ‘national sport’ has been headline material twice over the past few years. The first time was in August 2007, when Bollywood came to temporarily save the day (and earn a lot of money) as the blockbuster film Chak De India on the story of India’s women’s hockey team made the sport the flavour of the month.

The second time was a few weeks ago, when the members of the Indian hockey team boycotted a national camp in Pune, demanding their unpaid dues. The news wouldn’t have made as much noise as it did but for the fact that India is set to host the Hockey world cup in a month. There was suddenly the ridiculous danger of the home team fielding a B-squad for the greatest stage of their so-called national sport.



The stand-off between the players and the hockey federation stretched for several days, with everyone from state ministers and movie stars (After Chak De India, superstar actor Shahrukh Khan became the self-appointed ad-hoc spokesperson for Indian hockey) pitching in their opinion.There were debates on national TV, front page articles in the newspapers, and more editorials written about the sport nationwide than those accumulated in the last ten years. The Hockey Federation seemed to have the sponsor money with them, so when news broadcasters asked the federation’s bigwigs in a live telecast about where the money went, they got bumbling, anxious responses. The audiences were glued: we smelled corruption and couldn’t look away.

Cricket must have watched jealously for a week. Well, finally, a resolution was reached: the players got their money, and India began another cricket series. The media’s attention shifted away and order was restored in the universe.

Most of the sport fans in India didn’t even know that the hockey world cup was imminent, and what more, that it was being hosted by India. The general public only became interested when hockey went wrong, and we suddenly had the federation to throw our verbal rotten apples at, and Shahrukh and the media had us showering our sympathy on our poor professionals who never get what they deserve, and the facilities are appalling, and the money is bad, and now, it is the women’s hockey team turn to start asking for their money and so on and so forth.

The problem is that, with all the attention and finances thrown around by the broadcasters, promoters, media, and government authorities to make cricket the most lucrative business in India, there is little left room left to share with other sports in the country. It is perhaps no surprise then, that India, a country of a billion and a half people, has won a staggering ONE (1) individual gold in the history of the Olympic Games, and that too went to the shooter Abhinav Bindra at Beijing 2008, who was rich enough to self-finance his training, equipment, and success, free from the meddling hands of the government. The Olympics, obviously, don’t feature cricket, or India would have be raking in the medals and the positive vibes.

Team sports in India, such as football, basketball, and hockey, are forever stifled by age-old bureaucratic traditions, where a young talent finds it near improbable to climb up the ranks without politicking with the authorities on the side. Football has managed to thrive a little more than the others because of the century old tradition in the country and the marginally successful I-League. Even they have complaints: International superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi are far better known than the members of our own national team.

The hockey debacle has once again exposed India’s monomaniacal obsession with cricket. A cricket international would never be treated the way the hockey internationals were. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is obviously the country’s richest sporting body. Compared to it, other sports, and particularly basketball, is still miles behind. Basketball even lacks the ‘national sport’ sentiment that hockey is often credited (or burdened) with or the historical significance of football.

Ayaz Memon, one of India’s most respected sport’s journalist and a columnist for NBA.com/India, writes in his article ‘The Changing Face of Sports’ that, “…NBA can be of help to India: not necessarily because of the sport it represents, but more because of the way it has gone about conducting its business. I used the last word of the previous sentence deliberately, because in India, sport has hardly been seen as business, more as pastime: the government provides some grant, officials hang on to office for power rather than passion for the sport, and players fight heavy odds to eke out a living or at least some glory.”

The NBA business model relies a lot on individual marketing of players to deepen their fan base. Would a basketball star in India ever be marketed this way? Would another sport’s star ever be held in the kind of reverence that is showered on cricketers like Tendulkar or Dhoni? The Basketball Federation of India (BFI) has been pondering bringing in a NBA-inspired league system to basketball here, and although it would generate a little more excitement and hope for the sport, it would only be a modest first step.

Compared to a few of the other sports, Basketball has a relatively cleaner reputation in terms of corruption or embezzlement in India, but I believe that the trend of seniority-based preferential treatment and unfair team selections would have to be cleaned out from the sport’s culture. When I spoke to India’s former women’s national captain Divya Singh, she said, “I don’t like cricket very much, but I admire the way that it is managed. It’s possible for basketball to grow in India. There is a court in most of the schools in India, and kids play the game regularly at a young age. Their talent needs to be channelized in the right way.”



The other good news is that, as time has passed, the attention level of your average viewer is diminishing by the day. Half a century ago, cricket started off as a five-day marathon, and in the 70s morphed into a day-long game. Now, the most recent form of the game (the Twenty-20) only lasts around three hours and has taken cricket hysteria to new heights. If projected as a shorter, faster, and more athletically appealing sport, basketball has the perfect opening to carve out a space for itself in the public's consciousness.

In recent years, Leander Paes, Sania Mirza, Viswanathan Anand, Bhaichung Bhutia, Saina Nehwal, Abhinav Bindra, Vijay Singh, and others have had relative successes in their respective sports, gaining a little bit of fame and commercial value. We are still a long way away before the successes of non-cricket athletes are taken by the majority of Indians seriously. The mainstream media’s regular interest in hockey’s darkest day shouldn’t be just some one-off fling with other sports in India. Like hockey, sports like basketball should be put under the scrutinizing media spotlight, making the structure behind the system accountable as well as help in promoting the game.

*First published on SLAMOnline.com on January 28, 2010.