IT’s BECOME fashionable for the IPL franchises to compare themselves to the English Premier League football clubs as a business model. Given that I was at the Premier League’s Chelsea against Liverpool game Sunday, I thought it might be interesting for Indian sports fans to compare their sporting experience against matchday at Chelsea.
Arriving before the game, there was no crush of fans despite a 41,000 sell out crowd. No suprise really, we were 2 and a half hours before kick off, but the reason we were so early was a lunch at one of the many restaurants inside and outside the stadium. The options ranged from celebrity chef Marco Pierre White to jockey Frankie Dettori’s themed restaurant. Inside the ground, the buffets and bars were doing remarkable business with up market food, quite apart from the crowd heading for the dedicated executive boxes.
I’d not been to the ground in a few years, since a 10 hour flight from India to watch my team Derby County was already a disaster 10 minutes into the game (we were 3-0 down by then, and worse was to follow). However, no problems with finding our seats – clear directional signs everywhere, supported by hundreds of clearly identifiable stewards wearing luminous bibs.
The effort on bringing fans into the ground early was not just about food and drink. Betting slips were on all the tables, encouraging fans to predict scorelines and scorers (clearly a sizeable source of revenue), and inside the stadium the pre match entertainment also began an hour before kick off. The Chelsea brass band was in action, supported by Chelsea TV on two giant screens at opposing corners of the stadium.
The position of the screens meant everyone in the ground could see the pictures clearly, and the screens were used for a variety of purposes from the commercial to the informative (including scores from the other games, team news, ticket news to even birthday messages for the crowd). On the pitch itself, a microphone wielding announcer did his best to warm up the crowd, aided by a long list of celebrities paraded through prize draws and announcements.
Among the stars on show on the pitch was Chelsea fan and former England cricketer Alec Stewart, former Chelsea stars from the seventies (legendary hardman “Chopper” Harris), eighties and nineties, 3 NBA players in town, a troop of NBA cheerleaders (who were welcomed rather more warmly than the players) and even a celebrity chef with a Chelsea supporting son. It was announced that the Kuwaiti royal family was in attendance and the whole experience made you feel like you were part of a star studded audience.
Though former Chelsea legends were also busy meeting and greeting in the various lounges (a nice way of the club looking after their former stars by giving them a part of the current club), there was an effort to make every fan feel like they were part of an elite audience who had managed to find a ticket.
There was an effort to show a socially responsibly face to the club, with anti racism announcements and banners on show, not to mention awards for those who had excelled in assisting “football in the community”.
The stadium itself has been extensively re-designed and improved in the past two decades. The temptation to build a new showpiece monument stadium has been ignored by a desire to maintain and improve the traditions of the Stamford Bridge ground. There are no barriers to obstruct any view in the ground, with the seats close to the action and the views excellent. It encouraged plenty of criticism of the players with Didier Drogba accused of being a lazy good for nothing with a tendency to fall over by most of the Chelsea fans around us. Inevitably it was Drogba who made both the goals in Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Liverpool Sunday.
The TV facilities are built into the stadium, no unsightly cables or temporary structures. The cameramen are actually seated on moving chairs in the stands to avoid any obstruction in the public’s view, whilst the studio is permanently built into the roof of the stand. The pitch looked like a carpet, the branding of the sponsors was subtle and completely absent on the upper tiers.
After the game, the road in front of the ground is closed, allowing spectators plenty of space to make their way to their cars or public transport. Horseback police direct you to the special tube station dedicated to football fans, a station that has no ticket barriers or anything else to slow the leaving fan. We were onto a train within 5 minutes of leaving the ground.
The Chelsea match day experience, a target for the Indian sports franchise to keep in mind if they really want to convert sporting interest into paying consumers who return for a positive experience match after match.
The author is COO, Taj Television Ltd.
