Friday, January 11, 2008

Why Force India F1 will not be popular in India

Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan, £65m, a dedicated social networking site, go-karting initiatives.
All this and more is what Force India, the first and only Indian-owned team in Formula One, is using to force itself into the cricket-driven psyche of India.
Force India, the latest iteration of the former Jordan team, will race in this year's F1 world championship with veteran driver Giancarlo Fisichella and the up-and-coming German Adrian Sutil.
But it is what the team represents that makes this re branding so potentially seismic.
The new owner of the team, drinks baron Vijay Mallya, is hoping to tap into the huge potential of the rapidly-expanding Indian economy - an aim shared by many of F1's power brokers.
A country where cricket is followed as a religion and no other sport comes even remotely close to that, including its national game hockey, F1 has long been considered to be out of reach for most Indians.
But with an upwardly mobile aspiring class that numbers 300 million and growing, even this elite sport could find fertile ground.
And if Force India and F1 manage to attract even a small percentage of those people, that is still millions of potential new devotees.
But, Indians always like everything foreign. We have many urban population who are soccer fans but they are fans of European soccer. They don't care much about Indian soccer team or even clubs. There are more Manchester United fans than those of all the fans of Indian Clubs put together.
With so much pro-Indian controversies going on at regular intervals and the advent of twenty20 cricket it is going to be a near Impossible task for Mallya to challenge the popularity of cricket or soccer in urban populace.
Even the F1 fans would root for Ferrari,Mclaren and renault.

1 comments:

Tips for good parenting said...

I would like to share that Force India F1 has an official fan club. It can be accessed on Club Force
you will find a lot of similar discussions. Do visit it. May the force be with you :)