22 April 2008
Tribalism, Loyalty and Fans’ Attention Spans
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Indian Premier League; Twenty20 .
I have been meaning to write on this for quite sometime, now. In fact, there was one more thing I wanted to talk about in regards to the IPL, but that deserves separate space.
There has been a lot of talk going around about tribalism in the IPL. Questions like, “Will fans cheer for their home team when Symonds plays for them” and “Will they boo Sachin when he plays in the opposing team?” have been asked. Answers to these questions could, in some way, determine the loyalty quotient of the public, so to speak.
But while these are some fairly easy questions and can be answered upon watching three to four games, there are yet other questions, the answers to which, could go some way determining the extent of loyalty these fans have towards their adopted teams. A couple of them, off the top of my head, are: “Will fans travel to away games?” and “Will they feel conflicting emotions when a foreign player, who is a star of their franchise, comes and plays a match winning knock against India?” These questions would need more time and would really go some way to determining the extent of tribalism in Indian league cricket.
Prem Panicker has done a good round up in his post and Patrix has also raised the loyalty issue as sports in India have essentially been driven by nationalistic pride.
The British, and the Australian, press have generally scoffed at the chances of die-hard fan loyalty towards franchises in India. And it is possible to see where they are coming from — especially the English journalists. Club football is unparalleled in England when it comes to fan loyalty. “United, Kids, Wife” is the well known chant at Old Trafford (Manchester United) and they also have another that goes “United > England”.
Many fans of Manchester United, for example, criticize other fans who support their clubs but cheer England which has players they’ve usually grown to hate. In Spain such divisions are more apparent because of the cultural divisions in Spain itself. For example, in the province of Catalonia (Barcelona is its capital) people take tremendous pride in their team — they even have an anthem for that, and show a general apathy towards the national team. In European football, in general, club football has become the dominant force and hence in many places club loyalty takes precedence. While this could be a generalization, it is a reasonable enough claim in this context.
In India, however, things are rather interesting. Club/franchise based cricket has emerged now, more like an afterthought, with international cricket still maintaining it’s preeminence. So my admiration for Sachin Tendulkar, despite my support for the Chennai Super Kings, will remain. It would be interesting to see — assuming the IPL manages to sustain itself for a good number of years — the reaction of Indian fans towards the generation of cricketers that graduate from the franchises, into the national team. That is where true extent of conflicting emotions may arise.
But let’s get to the present. Is there a place for tribal loyalty towards teams in the IPL? That could be answered based on what unfolds over the next month or so. On the surface, a credible argument could be made about the diverse cultures that typify these cities. Chennai-ites, and Tamilians in general, would usually have a strong sense of bond for their city team despite the absence of big name Tamil players from their team roster — Dinesh Karthik is not there, and Balaji is in the squad but has been out of fans’ minds for quite some time now; only Badrinath the Tamil Nadu Ranji captain is a recognizable name. Mumbai and Kolkata, thanks to Sachin and Saurav, will get behind their team as evidenced by the support they had in their last two games.
More importantly, the franchise owners’ ability to identify the team with key personalities, music and choice of a certain theme that strikes a chord with the locals would be key to get fans to support their team and, hence, build some loyalty. So we could say that in a country with as much diversity as ours, it shouldn’t be too difficult to add a dash of parochialism to the nature of an Indian fan; if you still doubt that, the Rediff boards provide ample evidence.
However, all this will be severely tested over the next few weeks and will give us an idea of fan loyalty.
The IPL, unlike other league format sports, runs daily. The fans will be faced with a tournament relentless and long that would test the attention span of the modern urban youth. Will he still stay glued to the television as the tournament wears on? Will he come to the stadium to cheer his home team even if they are rooted at the bottom of the table and have no way of making the semi-finals? Will the length of the tournament be something to worry about; after all the 2007 World Cup was heavily criticized because of it’s length.
Or will fans adopt an Indian Idol like approach by picking a promising contestant (here, team) early on and subsequently moving on to another promising team the next season?
For the IPL to succeed, though, fan loyalty is crucial. And a successful IPL would also result in stronger fan ties with each season. They feed off each other. Hopefully, by June 1st, we could get some answers to these questions, although, even then, it will be interesting to see how fans express their loyalty towards their teams.
Which is why it was sad to see some of the naysayers jumping to such conclusions on fan loyalty even before the first six off Brendan McCullum’s bat. Yes, yes, I know, the irony of the cheer his innings received from the Bangalore crowd is not lost on me!
3 Comments so far...
Patrix Says:
22 April 2008 at 10:31 pm.
I admit I hadn’t thought about the regional origins of the players themselves in the role of drumming up support for their team. But then that would follow on the lines of Ranji format i.e. only players that reside/domiciled in that state to be eligible for that state team. However, IPL teams aren’t that way. I agree that perhaps expecting fans to travel to away games might be a stretch. We have never been that fond of flocking to the stadiums anyway. Hopefully upgrading the facilities and improving the fan experience at the venues will go a long way in that regards.
Also, in terms of the length of the tournament, would a long tournament necessarily be a bad thing? I mean if we can schedule separate and sufficiently long seasons say, 3-4 months for international cricket and IPL cricket with a break as a buffer in between for couple of months it could help not only the players but also the fans to switch gears. Of course, I’m thinking of ideal situations here and assuming that everyone in the cricket admin business works for the betterment of the game and not their own selfish ends.
Aditya Says:
22 April 2008 at 10:41 pm.
I would love a long IPL like the NFL or the EPL. I don’t know if the Indian public will lap it up? Would a week’s break in between games be too long? I don’t know. Plus it’s not going to be easy with the current cricketing climate and the ICC.
Yes, travelling fans would be a bit of a stretch.
Regarding domiciles, the IPL has a restriction that young upcoming players MUST be from the catchment areas allocated to the franchises. So if they do throw up stars then it is great to drum up loyalty.
The Chennai franchise are already talking about setting up a fan club/association.
Patrix Says:
23 April 2008 at 10:36 am.
The catchment areas idea sounds fine. I hope that will help discover new talent. I’m assuming cricket talent in India is uniformly spread coz you wouldn’t want certain teams to have a permanent advantage in terms of recruiting. Lack of structure at school or college level negates the concept of a draft so we would have to rely on scouts to travel to the hinterland and spend hours at the city maidans to discover talent.
