Women in Indian Sports Sweat for Their Share of a Booming Market

New York Times

21 hours ago

There were the usual speakers you would expect at a sports summit: Current and former champions shared lessons from their journeys. Business and industry leaders presented numbers showing growth in viewership.
But as dozens of young female athletes filed into an auditorium in India's commercial hub of Mumbai, the choice of two female influencers to deliver pep talks spoke volumes about this moment for Indian women in sports. They talked about how to be authentic on social media to connect with fans, grow their audiences and make money off it.
One of them, Aanchal Agarwal, a comic and a former amateur badminton player, focused on financial independence. Ms. Agarwal — who described herself as 'so chronically online that, even as I am talking to you right now, in my head I am watching reels' — said that an athlete's shelf life is short and that they should seize their moment.
'Get that coin, girl!' she told The Sports Women Huddle.
India's sports market is booming, and female athletes who have long labored in the shadow of men want to make sure they get their share of it.
A recent study by Google and Deloitte estimates that there are 655 million sports fans in the country, and that the broader sports market is expected to be worth $130 billion by 2030, growing at nearly double the rate of the country's G.D.P.
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