The Macro…
I have been in Bhubaneswar for the past week, taking in the action of the Hockey World Cup - the second consecutive one to be held in Odisha (the 2018 edition was held exclusively in the capital city, 2023 saw Rourkela and its sparkling new stadium added to the list). Hockey, where India once held what in econ parlance one might term an ‘absolute advantage1’, has undergone quite a shift over the last six decades since the introduction of artificial turf at the Rome Olympics saw India’s stick wizardry and dribbling dominance wane and European powers rise.
But it has also made the economics of the sport complicated. Shorn of facilities that require substantial investment, Asian powerhouses have regressed. Pakistan, who actually won the inaugural men’s World Cup, a tournament conceived by a Pakistani Air Marshal, Nur Khan, are perhaps the most stark example among them (their men’s team are currently ranked 16th in the World). India’s last big success was the men’s World Cup trophy in 1975, and since then the game has been eclipsed by cricket, commercially and canonically. This has made it difficult for the global game to sustain itself with barely 30 million2 people playing the sport recreationally. The number is crucial because recreational players often form the base of the pyramid for the talent supply lines at the professional level as well as a large part of the viewers. All of these things have, in a twisted way, brought the centre of the game back to India, and more specifically a talent rich niche in India - Odisha.
Sport survives on bandwagon demand, and that the locals in Odisha have in plenty. Everyone from the cab driver to the hotel bell hop, to the local rasgulla vendor, is chatting hockey, and all of them are willing to go to the stadium and attend the games, even when India is not in action. In fact the tickets priced at an average of Rs. 400 (US$ 5) are well within reach as well, but that brings me to the peculiar problem of empty stands in stadiums despite games being “sold out”.
…and the Micro
The knockout stages of the 2023 World Cup have been incredibly dramatic producing some thrilling hockey games, but a majority of them have seen barely 50% of the stands full at the Kalinga Stadium. The paradox of the fact that you could not get a ticket for those games on the ticketing website, but seats were empty, can be explained by a basic misunderstanding of the concept of demand (by the government, no less) and the econ concept of “search costs”.
Markets ideally do a fine job of matching buyers to sellers, but interventions or ‘frictions’ can ruin that flow. In the World Cup’s case, the state government has bought up a lot of the tickets, and while they have been assigned to ministers, bureaucrats, and their coteries, a lot of them probably simply have no desire or willingness to come for a hockey game. Meanwhile, those hockey fans, from the dahibara seller to the IT engineer, who have the three demand elements - desire, willingness, and ability to pay (since the price is reasonable, particularly for a state where the average income is much lower than the rest of the country), are being shut out of the market. Even if they were to look for it, there are no reliable reselling platforms or mechanisms to assign tickets someone doesn’t wish to use, to someone else. And a lot of enthusiasts from tribal areas or smaller towns and districts in the state may have missed out simply because they are not tech literate and tickets were available mostly online. Both of these things are frictions that increase the ‘search cost’ in the market making it inefficient and leaving people worse off.
That’s probably something for the administration to chew on when the next big hockey event comes to Odisha, which, given the kind of infrastructural and financial support the state has provided, it most certainly will.
From the sidelines…
One of the more amusing aspects I found while soaking in the superb atmosphere the whole city of Bhubaneswar has put up for the tournament (it looks like the whole city is hosting a function and everyone is invited - the spirit is amazing!) is seeing hotels where the teams are put up advertise the fact with pride. My good friend Vipul who’s also here for the tournament (and is a way bigger sports and hockey fan than I am) remarked how the final - Germany v Belgium - will be the hospitality derby between Sandy’s Tower (where the Belgian team are staying, a fact we know thanks to, well, Sandy’s Tower) and Trident (where the German team are).
Incidentally, the hotels are indulging in what economists might call ‘signalling’. Information asymmetry (the seller knowing more than the buyer) might make it difficult to figure out if the used treadmill you are about to buy or the hotel you are about to book is actually any good. But such signals can make the decision easier. I mean, the defending world champions are staying there? Surely the hotel must be pretty decent. And that is why today Trident - which is decked up in German flag colours like it is the heyday of the Weimar Republic - might be rooting for Germany to go and win it all!
And finally, I spent my off day from hockey catching Shah Rukh Khan’s latest blockbuster Pathaan. Even the movie hall had hockey World Cup paraphernalia! SRK and hockey conjure up images of Chak De India, the movie that revived popular interest in hockey and actually shifted demand. In 2007, following the release of the film (and the Indian team’s success in the Asia Cup - the men won the title) demand for hockey equipment in India spiked 25-30%. It remains to be seen what will happen to equipment demand, given that India were knocked out early in this World Cup, and Pathaan features exactly zero hockey sticks.
India won every Olympics gold medal from 1928 until 1956, without losing a single game until the final at Rome in 1960.
As compared to say football that is recreationally played by billions of people across the world