THESE days we find the term “sports academy” used very liberally- and not very wrongfully too. After all, dictionary says that an academy is a school for special training or advancement of skills or knowledge. But, somehow the word “academy” sounds too sacrosanct to be used for any coaching centre whose primary purpose is to generate revenues through the enrollment fees from students. An academy is supposed to develop the best of “raw” talents by providing the best of coaching facilities (the emphasis on the word “raw” is to differentiate an academy from a finishing school). Now, a coaching centre may argue that if it is providing the best of facilities doesn’t it qualify as an academy – the answer is NO. That is because the level of investment, the skill-set required, the operational requirements & the overall business plan of the above two models differ considerably. The principles remain the same for any sport, but since Football is the most discussed sport in India when it comes to coaching or lack of it, I’ll use football to elaborate my point.
Just like any “retail-outlet” the core of the business of a coaching centre is the number of foot-falls & average revenue per foot-fall. In coaching terms this will translate to number of batches, number of students per batch & the fees per student. There is obviously a cap on the capacity if you have to maintain a minimum standard of coaching. Now any coaching centre has to strike a balance between quality & marketability to become successful, or even viable. You can’t expect to employ top coaches, have top equipment & facilities and still expect to charge“competitive” fees from students. You can easily work out a partnership with FC Barcelona or Arsenal FC, prepare a ground as per their standards, pay the European salaries to coaches and pay the “royalty” over and above all that if you think you can get 150-200 students who’ll pay 5000 rupees a month to be a part of such a programme. Or else you need to be little modest in what you spend and what you charge.
Moreover, the name of a big coach or a big club itself is not enough to attract the requisite number of students – you need to have an advertising budget, an aggressive sales team and most importantly an excellent location. You can’t expect kids to travel 30 kms even for a FC Barcelona Football School – after all, a coaching centre can work only as an after-school or a weekend model. The location constraint itself is the biggest challenge for this type of model because you can’t expect to buy a land in the heart of a tier-1 city and still make profits. Mostly it works as some kind of arrangement (eg. revenue share) with bodies/institutions like gymkhanas, schools or colleges which already have land with them. Needless to say, you’ll be working on very thin margins in a business of coaching centre – so success lies in the SCALE. This business starts looking attractive once you have more than say 20 or more centres up & running. On the talent front, you can’t expect to produce a Messi or even an Indian national player from such coaching centres unless you are very lucky. To be fair that was never the motive.
Academy on the other hand is all about serious football, professional football. “Scouting” is a key role/functional area in an academy which is non- existent in a coaching centre. As some say, people are just born with “it”. You can develop a great player into a champion but it’s very difficult to turn an average player into a world-beater. Well, Edison’s philosophy of genius being 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration may hold true but why take the risk, especially when you are investing so much of money and so much of effort in your academy. Mind you, I am not undermining the role of “perspiration” here. A great player still needs to put in 10,000 hours of practice to become a genius (according to some British scientists). Someone may argue that how much you can judge by looking at an 11 or a 12 year old kid – he’s far from being a fully developed player. True, but that’s why the role of scouts is so crucial. Scouts have to look at all 3 parameters – skills, understanding of the game & physical attributes to make selections. Depending on the ambition of the academy – a scout may need to watch 5000 talented kids play before he selects even a single kid.
The second aspect of an academy is obviously the development of players – technical development, physical development & mental development. Other than the game skills, fitness regime & diet are integral to a player’s development. Development of young kids is no easy task and you need excellent systems & processes and also coaches with relevant experience in place. Jose Mourinho may be the best club coach in the world, but even he may not have the right aptitude and right skills to train young kids. Ajax or Sporting Lisbon may not stand a chance in front of big clubs like Manchester United or AC Milan but arguably they have much better youth development academies. Trainers at JMG football academy make all the kids play barefoot for first 3 years of their training because they believe that helps them develop better control. I just mentioned JMG because it is a glaring example of a successful academy. This academy was founded by Ex- French footballer Jean-Marc Guillou in mid 1990s in the small nation of Ivory Coast in Africa. This academy changed the face of football in the country. 70% of the players in the 2006 Ivory Coast came from the JMG football academy, and this was the first time Ivory Coast had ever qualified for the world cup finals! World Class players from the academy like Kolo Toure, Yaya Toure, Salmon Kalou, Emmanuel Eboue and Didier Zakora are right now playing for the clubs like Chelsea FC, Arsenal FC and Manchester City.
In India, most of the I-League clubs have their own academies and there are few other initiatives like the well known Tata Football Academy. But all of them severely lack in both the departments- scouting & development and hence the results haven’t really been something to be proud of. If you want to aim higher, you have to plan better and spend more. Now again, an academy need not be a pet project of a professional club or a CSR activity, but it can be a self-sustainable model in itself. But you should look at it as a long-term investment with a break-even period of at least 8 to 10 years. A good academy requires a gradual investment of 25-30 crores before it starts generating any revenues. The cost would include infrastructure (pitch, hostel, facilities), staff (coaches, trainers, administration), scouting, kids (travel, food, education, accessories) & marketing (networking, trials). One good thing about this is that since it is a residential academy, you don’t have to worry about where you set it up.
Since the only income for the academy would come from transfer of players to clubs in Europe, USA, South America, Asia or even India, it will do you a world of good to do some extensive research on laws and other nitty-grities in player transfers, work permits in various countries, agreements with players, tie-ups with professional clubs, the percentage share of the revenues for the academy in the secondary transfers ( from one club to another) etc. Sunil Chhetri was not allowed to play for Queen Park Rangers because of a ludicrous British government rule permitting non-European Union players only if their country was among the top-70 in the world rankings. Even FC Barcelona’s La Masia is finding it difficult to hold on to Jon Toral Harper as Arsenal comes looking because Spanish government does not allow academies to sign agreements with players less than 16 years of age. But if you have everything in place your revenues from good players can range from 50,000 dollars to as high as 2 to 3 million dollars. And considering the growth of football market in India and Asia, the demand for players should not be a problem in the future.
Both the models have their benefits. While coaching centres provide for immediate gratification at considerably lower level of risks, academies have a huge potential upside plus the pride & name that comes with producing great players. One thing is certain though – India desperately needs both; coaching centres to develop the culture of football and provide opportunities to more and more kids to learn the game and play at a good level and academies to produce players of highest quality who can take India to football stardom.
