Kirsty Coventry makes Olympic history; India's ambition for an Olympic future

0:04Welcome to the Leaders Sport Business Podcast, the podcast about leaders in sport from leaders in sport. My name is David Cushman. I'm the content director around here at Leaders. James Emmett, not on the podcast today. He's away in Los Angeles. More from him on that next week, helping to deliver the inaugural Business of Soccer event, a joint partnership with our friends at Sports Business Journal in partnership with Major League Soccer and CONCACAF. I, meanwhile, I'm just back from Bangalore, Bengaluru, where I have been part of the leaders team helping to deliver the RCB Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit powered by leaders.

0:49The second edition of this one in India's tech capital, Bangalore. Amazing, hustling, bustling city of well over 14 million people. Royal Challengers Bangalore, the IPL team, the WPL team. Very much big news in those parts. The first time we were there was a year and a chunk ago in November 2023. And delighted to be back there last week for a couple of days of really high level conversation about India, about the Indian sports market. We brought along a number of international speakers as well to bring some expertise and experience and some shared wisdom on how to build India and continue to develop India as a sport forward nation.

1:42Nick Coward was one of those speakers who was with us, expert partner at Portus Consulting, out with us in Bangalore. He was there for the first edition as well, and he's going to be with us on this podcast in a few moments time to reflect on a really fantastic and illuminating few days. Thank you to everybody who came over to Bangalore to be part of it. We had a great crop of international speakers. We had Surge, Chloe Targa-Adams from Surge in a session that you'll hear more about because Nick moderated it. British Cycling. We had Darren Henry delivering a fantastic presentation on how a governing body can be made fit for purpose and turn into a winning machine by unifying the commercial and performance sides of the output.

2:36We had Nick Brown from FIFA, top commercial operator at FIFA, looking ahead to the North American swing over the next couple of summers for FIFA with the Club World Cup and then the Men's World Cup in 2026, but also talking about the importance of India as a strategic market. We also had the International Olympic Committee. Sean Doss was with us from Elevate as well. And we had a bunch of really fantastic speakers from the Indian sports and business market as well, led really, it has to be said, by Virat Kohli, a rare chance to hear from one of sport's real global superstars talking about leadership, his future, his assessment of cricket and the health of cricket around the world.

3:25Nick and I are going to reflect on all of that. The 2036 bid for the Olympics or the prospect of a bid for the Olympics from India was, as you can imagine, high on the agenda on stage, but also in the margins in Bangalore. And Nick and I chatted Thursday lunchtime. I'm talking to you a few hours later on Thursday afternoon because I wanted to bring you the news that we just had, that there is a new International Olympic Committee president elected and a historic moment, a really historic moment for the Olympic movement and for world sport. actually kirstie coventry of zimbabwe 41 years old will be the 10th ioc president in june she will take over from the outgoing thomas back kirstie coventry a dominant winner on in the first round of voting at the ioc session in greece chosen over uh six other candidates Prince Faisal of Jordan, David Lepartian of the cycling world, Johan Eliash from the Skiing Federation, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., Sebastian Coe and Morinari Watanabe.

4:40uh kirstie coventry uh long considered one of the three main contenders for the ioc presidency alongside co and sam ranch just looking at the uh voting numbers that have just come out for this and a rather extraordinary result actually kirstie coventry winning with 49 votes in the first round just securing uh what she needed the hurdle that she needed to overcome to win in that first round 49 votes for Kirsty Coventry, Juan Antonio Samarach taking 28, Sebco only receiving eight votes and then the rest split in low single figures amongst the other candidates. So yeah, a moment of real history and a real significance for global sport as well.

5:31Kirsty Coventry, as I say, taking over in June, long considered the favourite of Thomas Buck as a successor. And she will be overseeing the next decade potentially of the Olympic movement. So Olympic Games in Milan, in Los Angeles, in the French Alps, in Brisbane, in Salt Lake City. She'll be involved in awarding the next Games in 2036 and more on that with Nick shortly. But she's also going to be setting the tone and direction for global sports on issues like gender, on the battle against doping, on the environment and sustainability, on the integration or interference of AI in sport. She'll be navigating global politics and political turmoil.

6:18She'll be working through a complex and changing media landscape, along with the great team already working on that within the IOC. she will have the continuing job of ensuring that the IOC and the Olympics remain relevant to younger audiences working with all sorts of sports as they try and head off major disruption and the threat of breakaway leagues she'll be building out the first esports Olympics there's obviously the constant need for the IOC to attract and build relationships with commercial partners and media partners. There's governance work to be done, improving governance all around the world at the many National Olympic Committees and National Sports Federation level.

7:00And probably also working out how a model, a business model, a financial model that's built around not paying athletes changes to reflect and reward the stars of the Olympic show, which is something that could well become higher and higher a priority on her agenda over the coming years. A really daunting set of challenges is going to require plenty of political nows. Already a great executive team in place in all the key departments at the IOC in Lausanne. Kirsty Coventry has been the sports minister in Zimbabwe for a number of years, so she has experience at government level and navigating those sorts of corridors.

7:40But this is a whole new ballgame for her. So Kirstie Coventry, the next president of the International Olympic Committee. As I say, we recorded with Nick a little bit earlier on today before the election result. But let's bring Nick in now as we reflect on a fantastic few days at the RCB Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit powered by leaders. Nick Coward, good to see you. We had intended to record this in Bangalore, possibly over a Kingfisher. We have not managed to do that for various, let's call them unforeseen reasons. And I know you have just got back to the UK after a bit of additional travel across India.

8:27What are your reflections after another week poking around the Indian sports industry? Very good to see you, David. Yes, Bengaluru was a real experience and then off to Mumbai to spend time with Geostar and maybe we'll come back to what Geostar are up to and particularly the conversations that felt not surprisingly to dominate what was going on in Bengaluru about the Champions Trophy final. we had the WPL final whilst we were there and obviously India is about to stop and get into full IPL mode a couple of days time that all kicks off so yeah it was a good trip to Mumbai yeah we'll come back to that but back to Bengaluru for the second edition I thought there were some really interesting things coming out of it and I was trying to think one way to put it is the the the conversation seemed to have shifted on to reframing and rebranding sports and where it sits in the indian national plan now that might sound a bit of a mouthful but i i thought it it felt like again from november 2023 to now things had moved on and i was trying to draw an analogy with the other big thing that's happening today which is as we're recording isn't it people are just about to get into the voting booths or however you do it for the IOC election.

9:54It's more a conclave, isn't it? It's a conclave. I never quite, apart from the film, I've never quite understood what that means. But today, there will be a new IOC president. And the one candidate I suppose I've known, having seen him win gold, actually, in the Coliseum in LA in 1984 and worked with him over the years occasionally, Sebco, one thing that always strikes me, has always struck me. I'm sure you're the same. Whenever you see him, this is a guy who is absolutely preparing to win. It's almost success. Success is inevitable. And if it doesn't quite happen, well, he left no stone unturned.

10:30And I think, I don't know if you felt this, but whereas in 2023, there was a feeling, perhaps a real feeling of, well, it's 1983, three, an India and World Cup win. It can't possibly happen. Oh, it's happened. This time round, it felt like there was more of a Niraj Chopra type reference to, we're not just turning up for places, we're turning up to win. And for me, the standout character, not surprisingly, from our session in Bengaluru, an hour listening to and experiencing the full force of Virat Kohli talking about his life and the way he approaches achieving success that felt like how the Indian sports business politicians you know business leaders big families everyone in the system is more thinking about it that whilst it's not yet inevitable that India is going to succeed it's definitely the um I thought Chloe who we'll talk about as well Chloe Target Adams from Surge her F1 mantra of impossible is possible.

11:36Definitely felt how people in the room are feeling about building sport, what it can do in India. Really noticeable, a shift in confidence. Yeah, definitely. I think optimism, as you say, confidence, I think an assuredness maybe sort of being baked into the system. And I guess that is to some extent, or maybe to a large extent, being it's coming top down you know you have the the prospect and it was actually it's always interesting how explicitly these things are talked about but it is being talked about explicitly on stage but certainly off stage the prospect of this bid this ambition to host the olympic games in india in 2036 and the whole thrust of the event really the overarching theme was around what India needs to do over the next 10 years to become a sport forward nation.

12:32That was the phrase that we sort of collectively landed on with Royal Challengers Bangalore in programming the event and in delivering the event. And hopefully it was a through line through a lot of the conversations. One thing that struck me, and I suppose it's an obvious thing, but I think it's a heartening thing as well. There's obviously a huge commercial piece and a lot of the international speakers that we had inevitably coming to talk about India as a ripe commercial market. And we can talk about the dynamic media market, but the corporate sector and just the fact that there's a billion people in the country.

13:12It's an obvious commercial opportunity, but both from the international speakers coming in, whether that was Nick Brown, the SVP of commercial at FIFA, or whether it was Aditya Aditya from the International Olympic Committee, also talking as much as did a lot of the speakers from India about the performance side, the talent identification, the player pathway that needs to be created in all sorts of different sports to be able to unlock the potential. And there's very much, you know, your idea of winning. Yes, OK, there's going to be an Olympics bid and, you know, there will be a win or a loss there in terms of 2036, and that will emerge.

13:57But there's also actually developing athletes winning on the global stage in sports that aren't just cricket. And I think that is, that felt really encouraging and again felt different to some of the conversations that were being had when we were last there at the end of 2023. Yeah, great to hear from Hina Diageo in India Chief Exec. And she was highlighting one part of that, which was the analogy between India's performance in terms of medals and, say, Stanford University or UCLA, which was, and I would throw in Loughborough, who I know are very active in India, for example, at one end. But also then you had, on day two, we had the sports skills organization for the entire nation talking about, as you say, the entire, how are we going to engage, how are we going to reframe, re-brand sport?

14:57And that has to start in schools. And making 45 minutes of physical activity per day through the education system compulsory. And the scale of the challenge. So you've got the elite bit, as Hina was describing, but then to think about how much you need to upskill the entire teaching workforce across the entire nation of India. And of course, we were constantly rightly reminded and people reminding each other that this is a vast nation. And, you know, you can talk about 28, 30, 50 separate nations within India, but the scale of that challenge. And then bringing it across to Hina's not the only one who was there from the corporate side talking about the contribution.

15:46We had Karthik from Puma, obviously, in a fascinating conversation, which I think linked to others who then started talking about if we're going to make this happen, if we're going to do everything from... participation to pathway we've got to get the policy framework right and who was the hockey goalkeeper the bronze medal winning hockey goalkeeper can't remember his name pr srijeth absolutely saying something you know we are we are brilliant at building office blocks on open space but actually no one's really thinking about building the sports stadium i thought that was really interesting you know people then starting to really scratch out how can we get the planning system right and how can we build incentives for corporates to really think hard about what they can do, not just at the top level, as you say, but throughout the entire system, all the way down into participation, giving kids spaces to play.

16:37Nothing revolutionary here, but how to do that in India, a bit of a challenge. Yeah. And my sense is that actually this gets to the nub of the Olympic project, the Olympic bid, in that it has, I think, been identified as perhaps the way to focus minds, to join up the various disparate elements of the whole sports ecosystem that, you know, are all existing. And we've had a lot of them in the room as well, but have probably not previously been coordinated because it's such a scale, so hard to do across, you know, national government and state government and all the various bodies and sports organizations, the corporate world, that sort of, you know, family wealth, family offices that are so involved in the sports industry and starting to further invest in it.

17:32And I think the it seems to me that this bid, this project, this ambition to host the Olympics is is already having a bit of an effect, actually, in terms of getting everything moving in the right direction. And the stars have aligned somewhat in that we have cricket joining the Olympic program for 2028, which I think has focused even more minds and more influential minds within India as well. Because, of course, we don't need to talk in too much depth about the popularity of cricket in India. Yeah. So I think there's a but it is quite hard to get a read or get a consistent read on exactly where and how this this Olympic bid project stands.

18:21Lots of different views, again, you know, speaking to people in the margins, I was really trying to get a sense of, OK, where are we at? Because this has been going on for well over a year now. We had the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, making this public declaration that he wanted to bring the Olympics to India. There has been a sense of a sort of growing project around this. I have it on very good authority that there has been lots of lobbying going on and lots of discussion between the IOC and various stakeholders within the Indian sports and government environment. There are Paris 2024 executives who have been deployed to sort of offer briefings and guidance on how to do this.

19:05All of this happening under the cloak of the IOC's current bidding process for the Olympic Games, which has obviously changed in recent years under the outgoing president, Thomas Bach. You have now this what they call targeted dialogue with potential host cities, and it's about a consultative agreement being reached. And there are some merits to that process. But what it has also done, I think, is for potential bidders or for bidders like India, like Ahmedabad, which we think is going to be the sort of the base city or the hub city for what would be a national games. What it's done is created all sorts of uncertainty about, you know, there's no fixed timeline.

19:53There's no fixed deadline. The IOC could theoretically, if it wanted to, announce the 2036 host in three weeks time, having reached agreement with anybody that it's been talking to. there's no sense of there's no absolute clarity or um certainty on who india might be bidding against and there's a sense that there will be or could be some bids from the middle east and various other cities have expressed some sort of interest so and i think that's actually we're probably reaching a stage where within the india project it would be really useful for a bit of certainty, a bit of, you know, a few deadlines and timelines being put in place.

20:40And I suspect it's happening at some level. It's certainly not happening at a level where it's publicly known and can be useful as a way of joining up these various stakeholders. The other thing to say is, of course, as you say, we're talking just hours before the IOC presidential election, And a new president is very likely to have an influence on a future bidding process and what that looks like. So there's a lot of moving parts and it feels like there's a lot of uncertainty in the process. And my assessment is we're maybe at a stage where that could start just to play against this project, particularly in a market as ambitious but large as India, where such a lot of things have to be joined up for this to be successful.

21:30Yeah, but the state of Gujarat, you mentioned Ahmedabad, it's galvanized and its consultants are appointing big book consultants, architects, all that necessary work is being done. 2030 Commonwealth Games is now being positively and properly talked about as being a launchpad big event that the state and the city should host on its pathway. and it's back to that we're going to win this or we're going to prepare as if this is going to happen so it's just a it's it's part of what we would naturally been be doing and i'm talking about that state um we had vita danny and uh husband jala that was a kind of a fascinating double act husband and wife insight into how uh you know families who are heavily involved in major corporates as they are um vita danny also a cousin i think of mukesh ambani bringing it back to um reliance and geostar but fascinating to listen to them and their journey um in relation to football through chenna in which is in the isl but i think most most interestingly how they got into table tennis um utt ultimate table tennis and a long conversation about what sport means around their family table and how they got involved.

22:51And what was a really interesting, I thought, call to arms to, I think they said, they chose a number of 100, but basically the next 100 families. You know, we, as part of this ambitious plan where the apparently impossible is going to be impossible, we are going to actually, you know, we want more people at all parts of the pyramid, if you like, or pathway or participation story, whether locally, regionally, state, nationally, to get involved in this big adventure. I thought that was a really interesting 45 minutes of the whole conference and the message that they were delivering out to others who, frankly, do need to, as part of a big national plan, need to get involved.

23:40Yeah, I completely agree. And I think it is a nice dynamic to have a husband and wife on stage together. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, but I think it really worked. Penny's is about the only one I've ever seen. I was trying to think of other ones that I've seen. Not quite the same. We should come up with a list with Leaders Week London in mind. If you are a husband and wife duo in the sports industry, we want to hear from you. Yeah, because we think there could be some potential fun. Just another one, talking about government and the plan, and obviously national government, big part of this.

24:12I thought when we were listening to Jayesh from Telangana, for those who don't know, huge, really important state, Hyderabad.

24:24I can't remember what the population, we're talking tens, 50, significant numbers of millions of people. And his take for that government was, okay, we're in enabling and funding. We're not going to tell people what to do. I thought it was hard in the room that he said, whereas most governments throughout perhaps the bureaucratic administrative history of the country like to deliver 500 page policies, you know, government people like to do policies. Well, ours is going to be 20 pages. Ours is an enabling and a framework. We know where we want to get to. We know what we want to be part of. But we want people to get involved in us.

25:03And he was effectively saying in the room, we want people who want to work with us to come and we will help you. I think we witnessed a live deal being done with the people who actually created the Padakone Dravid Centre for Sports Excellence, which was hosting this year, as they did last time around, say, come on, come and build the same in and around the Hyderabad area. That was nice to see. Yeah, definitely. And just going back to the Dhanis and the family wealth, I think there's a really, you know, it's not unique to India, of course, but there is a discussion point, I think, around the idea of philanthropy and where philanthropy can be very helpful and obviously beneficial and useful and desired.

25:52and you talked about Puma and we had Puma India on stage who have at a corporate level done a lot of work and there's some interesting dynamics there in terms of where the money comes from. A lot of these sort of family offices are linked, of course, to corporate giants within India and there are so many of them. But it seems to me that the idea of sort of philanthropy can go hand in hand with, you know, professionalization and commercialization and everything that we talk about in terms of, you know, creating sustainable, flourishing businesses. But it's got to be quite carefully managed. And I think that's why the Ultimate Table Tennis example was really strong, something that they have worked at.

26:41But critically, it's not just about Ultimate Table Tennis as the city-based franchise league IPL version of table tennis. they were very clear that it's about creating stars for India in table tennis and therefore creating pathways at state level competitions underneath the professional side of the game, high school competitions, you know, right down to grassroots participation. So it is that sort of top to bottom, you know, the pyramid in terms of professional right down to grassroots, which again you know positive and heartening to hear in a sport like table tennis and you can see the opportunities for a lot of other sports and you could see the ears prick up I think amongst a number of other Indian governing bodies in all sorts of different sports who are in the room because it's a model that can be replicated the session that you weren't able to make on on day two included a really nice moment from Seiko effectively saying to the room amongst a number of sizable corporates.

27:51Look, we are going to devote the entirety of our CSR spend in and through sport. So whilst there was also that family wealth call to arms from the Dhanis, there was also quite a significant move from corporates to do the same. And I think, again, taking it into part of the output, I think that RCB, you mentioned, and they're helped by some fantastic people at Sports and Society Accelerator, Nandan and Desh and colleagues, they're going to turn this into effectively a national and state government facing, this is what we need to do. And I think pulling up more fiscal policy incentives for corporates to really work hard on helping schools, for instance, tier two, tier three cities, for instance, build more and more facilities to enable their populations to get involved in physical activity, sport, all the way through to the pathway and the elite.

28:53That was a fascinating insight as well into a way in which corporate leaders are putting sport much, much, much higher up their agenda. There was another theme. I just wanted to mention this again because it relates and it links back to 2036, something which certainly my couple of days in mumbai after after our our time together at the conference you know you have you have moments when people are talking to you about the same thing and you're wondering whether this is a real theme the amount of people who talk about the cold play and recently just the massive yeah the massive success that cold play in mumbai was you're totally right that came up you know much more than once in conversation that example and what What I think it was doing, well, I'm going to take this as, you know, when you're speaking to Geostar and Sandro Gupta, who was kind of almost being talked about as, is he coming?

29:51Is he coming? He didn't in the end come, not surprisingly, as he's got an IPL to think about. But luckily enough to spend some time with him in Mumbai and him and colleagues all talking about what they are perceiving to be quite a fast change in the appetite for event. which maybe takes us into Sean Doss or Prashant Doss, as we need to call him now, when he was on the stage talking about what his organization, Elevate, are doing around the world, but trying to bring that into, he's a hometown Bengaluru boy. Who knew? I certainly didn't. But I thought just to bring it then to that theme of where the corporate world is and thinking about event as something which is much, much more attractive, It is seeming to the Indian consumer, the Indian entertainment consumer.

30:43And it's worth saying that Royal Challengers Bangalore have very much tapped into that. They're obviously approaching, worked with us on the summit, have rapidly approaching the IPL straight off the WPL season. But on the Monday after the event, so this past Monday, they hosted their annual unboxed event at their stadium, which is essentially a team practice session open to the public that they have supersized, supercharged into a sort of a bit of a sort of RCB all star competition. You know, who can hit the further six, you know, who can do the most spectacular catch, a bit of sort of trickery stuff.

31:29but also a uh you know very substantial because i know the the the stress of preparation that was involved in it um you know a multi-act music uh concert as well and again an opportunity for perhaps fans who can't get tickets to the ipl games to come along see vera coley and the rest of the team in action uh give them a you know almost give them a sort of big send-off into the season and they've been running that for a number of years now which again taps into this idea and this appetite for exposure to star athletes of course but but the sort of wider entertainment experience piece and for those who don't know WPR what two three seasons in yeah I think the RCB people were telling us you know all games sold out this is at their very sizable stadium right in the heart of the city in Bangalore final sold out.

32:28So if you're thinking about that, and then the Mumbai final, which the Mumbai Indians won as well, sold out. These are big events, obviously generated by cricket, and we have to see how translatable that is across to other sports, which can struggle. But we can see from this that there is this substantial appetite. I just want to call out a couple of the international speakers who were with us and said some really interesting stuff on stage. The reason they were all with us, of course, is because they see and recognize the opportunity in India or are indeed already active within India. So no surprise, a lot of positivity.

33:10But Nick Brown from FIFA, I thought, was really good talking in general about FIFA's rapid rapid commercial drive in North America in particular, but also when he talks about India, which FIFA does now regard, and he used the words as a super exciting, strategically important market. It was, again, going back to our earlier point, really noticeable to me that he, the commercial guy, he went first to, right, in terms of talent, India is a goldmine waiting to be waiting to be mined. You know, he talks about Arsene Wenger, who obviously has a role within FIFA, really seeing this as an opportunity market.