 "AIFF roadmap: Secretary general Shaji Prabhakaran explains how federation aims to realise 'Vision 2047'")
Earlier this month, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) launched its 25-year strategic roadmap ‘Vision 2047’ with the aim that by the centenary year of Independence, the ‘sleeping giants’ will emerge as a footballing powerhouse. In the context of national teams, the roadmap sets an objective for India to be among the four nations in Asia. “At a time when India’s role is becoming increasingly prominent on the world stage, we embark on a journey as ambitious as our nation itself," AIFF president Kalyan Chaubey said at the time of releasing the roadmap. Other salient features of the roadmap include increasing the number of matches for players (55 matches for each player across competitions in a season) and bumping up the revenue, by 500% by just 2026. At present, the revenue is Rs 80 crore for AIFF. While to some, the proposed objectives may look highly ambitious going by the track record of the federation, AIFF secretary general Shaji Prabhakaran feels nothing in the roadmap is impossible. While the functioning of AIFF, under the new executive council that came into existence in September last year, has become more efficient, it’s going to take a lot more for the federation to achieve its goals.
We at AIFF, successfully launched Strategic Roadmap for #IndianFootball, which will set our beloved 🇮🇳 on it's way to footballing heights in the next 25 years.
— Kalyan Chaubey (@kalyanchaubey) January 7, 2023
Glad to inform everyone that the entire team at AIFF has pulled out all the stops to meticulously chalk this out. pic.twitter.com/i2xKUKUPEw
Shaji, in a conversation with Firstpost, explained in detail exactly how AIFF aims to increase its revenue, achieve the objectives and how the roadmap was created. Excerpts from the interview: Can you explain the process of preparing the roadmap ‘Vision 2047’? Who all were consulted and the whole process. The president had announced immediately after being elected that we will come up with a roadmap in 100 days. The first step was to have in place a strategic team and we started consultations with all stakeholders; state associations, clubs, government, FIFA, AFC (Asian Football Confederation), coaches, referees, and everyone. You know the football landscape but you need first-hand information from people on the ground. We had fortnightly meetings with FIFA and AFC on every aspect. We have put in a lot of hours in making the roadmap and had a dedicated team. But in the end, it’s not like cast in stone. We will be readjusting to the realities as it comes. It focuses on both short-term and long-term plans. The objectives are well-defined and we have started working on different projects. Also Read | **How AIFF can deliver on promises made in ‘Vision 2047’ roadmap** While the roadmap is comprehensive and well thought out. AIFF is just one of the stakeholders and will depend on state and district associations to bring in the change. How AIFF plans to empower them and make them buy into the idea? We have consulted the member associations to build this roadmap. The members know their roles, but we cannot leave everything at that. We have to build their capacity. Our strategy is clear, to work as collaborators and member associations are part of our team. We have started a financial assistance support programme, but it’s not just that we are giving money. It’s to build capacity in specific areas. We are funding manpower. There will be full-time technical and administration manpower at associations and we will finance their salary. We are going to fund some of the competitions and women’s leagues. There are mostly honourary people in state associations and they don’t have access to that sort of funds or information flow. Now we are empowering them and trying to see how they can collaborate better with governments. The resources are there in the state but we need to see how they can attract local support and in this process, they will know what they need to do step by step to achieve their objectives. There will be a self-evaluation method by which they can gauge the development and make course corrections if required. We are not calling the roadmap AIFF’s vision, this is the vision of Indian football. We are going to work as a team. There’s a special focus on digital transformation in the roadmap. Digitsation is one step where AIFF will be independent of member associations in many ways. What the federation is hoping to achieve and what steps are being taken? If you want to improve management then there’s no choice but you need to adopt the technology. Today, we don’t have data on how many players are playing at the district or state level, about the leagues, or competition. If you don’t have data you can’t take the right decisions and can’t connect with the right people who want you to be involved and engaged. We need to know the complete landscape and that can be achieved through digitisation. You don’t have to go to meet someone every day for capacity building. It’s part of our capacity-building exercise where we have comprehensive information. But it’s also an expensive affair so it is interlinked with the revenue we can generate. Everyone says football doesn’t have viewership but that is an assumption. We don’t have the data. Once we have the data and we know who is watching what football and how many are watching then we can also connect with the brand and get corporate support. Digitisation will also help in easing football operations. We will come up with an app where our digital content will also be there to improve fan engagement.
In line with ‘Vision 2047’ AIFF announces first batch of professional match officials offered full time contracts
— Indian Football Team (@IndianFootball) January 10, 2023
Read 👉🏼 https://t.co/B7y3iDEj0O#IndianFootball ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/WKTkSsogQk
As you said, digitisation is interlinked with revenue. In fact, every objective is dependent on revenue. The objective is to increase revenue by 500% by 2026. Currently, it’s at 80 crore. How do you plan to maximise the revenue? Our revenue streams are not optimised. We need to do that and then we need to diversify our revenue streams. We need to restructure our competitions, and the way we operate, create value for organisation, create value for football and our stakeholders. When the value of football gains, the commercial value will also rise. We will also be coming up with other initiatives like creating more assets and monetising them. There are various possibilities. I feel this is the least we can grow, and without growing to this level we cannot take the game to every corner of the country. We need to also look at bringing in CSR funds. This is the first time in the history of football that we have a separate commercial division apart from governance and administration and football development. Money is here in India. We are aiming to be a 20-30 trillion economy by 20247, so we have to see how football can also gain and for that we have to build our capacity. The money cricket is getting shows that sports in India can attract revenue. While we may not reach that level, we can aim to have some percentage of that in the coming 4-5 years. Given that India is already behind the curve, will the federation be looking to focus on specific states like northeastern states or West Bengal or Kerala to make a quick start on improving our teams? Our effort will be to give equal focus to every member association in building capacities. Some are more developed so they may outperform other states but for us, it’s about empowering the states and we need to distribute our effort equally. If we focus on specific states then that effort is not going to be sustainable. Every state offers unique opportunities and also the reality is different, hence our capacity building will be tailor-made. Maybe in some states administrative manpower maybe not be needed, instead, they might be needing a marketing or media head or some other resource. We will visit the states after March and we will make our action plans. We don’t want to make an action plan and give it to them. We want them to make a plan that they need to achieve and we will try to give the support that is required. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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