Licensed sports merchandise market in India

Abstract

In India, the sports merchandise market is at a really nascent stage — registering sales revenue of barely $41 million or so. Currently, most of the sales are through the cricket segment, where IPL teams have been pushing merchandise including T-shirts, key chains, caps and so on, but none of them has really set the market on fire. We may attribute some of this recent poor performance to COVID-19, which not only reduced people’s disposable income but also prevented fans from being at the stadiums, which meant even lesser incentive to wear the team colours, however, we believe the worst is behind us, and that there is a huge scope for this market to grow and go towards the direction of what football, NBA and American football clubs have been able to achieve in the west. Through this course project we aim to understand the demand for sports merchandise in India, the kind of merchandise people want to buy, the various attributes they value and finally the price that they are willing to pay for licensed merchandise.