
A new breed of creators is cultivating fandoms for sports beyond cricket
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A young basketball enthusiast at the time, Dhruv Barman went to Canada in 2013 to study kinesiology, the biomechanical study of human movement with applications in sports and fitness.
It was there that he was confronted by the poor standards of the sport in India. “While I studied, I pursued basketball, and the things I learned there in two years, I did not learn in India my entire life," he said.
On his return four years later, he started playing professionally, going on to become India’s top-ranked player in the International Basketball Federation’s half-court 3x3 format. He also started posting the videos of his matches online.
Now, Barman is a creator-coach with 43,200 followers on Instagram. “Many basketball lovers come from humble backgrounds and do not have the proper training, and unfortunately, there also aren't many qualified coaches for the sport in the country," said Barman, who is the NBA's India pick for NBA Legends in Abu Dhabi.
“So, as a thirty-year-old, when I am teaching teenagers techniques that I have learned and mastered over many years, I add value to their lives and make the sport popular." Barman is part of a growing cohort of players-turned-creators cultivating fandoms for sports like basketball, F1, chess, running, and volleyball in the country that has the highest number of YouTube and Instagram users.And they are helping pull brands and marketers into sports other than cricket, which has a monopoly in the nation’s sporting events market, pegged by KPMG at $19 billion and projected to reach $40 billion by 2030. “India remains cricket-dominated, generating 80-85% of sports revenue," said Prasanth Shanthakumaran, partner and head of the sports sector at
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