Aamir Bilal puts forward a blueprint for a hockey revival

Hockey, the national sport of Pakistan, has lost its flavour among the masses over the last decade. The reasons for the degeneration of hockey affairs are numerous, which have been highlighted off and on at various platforms. Unfortunately most of the suggestions of those concerned with the welfare of game, went unnoticed because of the apathy of previous hockey bosses preferred to remain firmly entrenched in their traditional way of working thus the development of hockey could never grow beyond certain barriers.

To revive the glory of Pakistan hockey, the management of hockey affairs will have to fight on two fronts simultaneously. The technical and tactical aspects of national hockey are already under focus. One feels relieved to know that FIH master coach Mauritus Hendricks was hired to impart coaching instructions to the hockey coaches in Pakistan. The credit goes to the new set up of Pakistan Hockey Federation for realizing the urgency of matter. It is believed that this pool of "Trained Senior Coaches" will a purpose of sincerity and spread their newly acquired technical knowledge to the other coaches of country. Thus a chain of highly qualified coaches can be prepared to educate hockey youth on correct and modern lines.

The second and the most unattended front is the Marketing and Media aspects of field hockey promotion. If Pakistan's hockey has to regain its place as the leaders of global hockey, the understanding and subsequent application of sport marketing and media dynamics is imperative for the hockey organizers.

"Sports marketing is the process of designing and implementing activities for the production, pricing, promotion and distribution of a sports product to satisfy the needs or desires of consumers and to achieve the organization's objectives."

There is a certain dearth of professionals in the field of sports marketing in our country in general and in hockey in particular. In the absence of a coherent sports culture and non-existence of professional based sports, it would not be easy to find professionals who fully understand the political, social and economic environments of sports industry. A common mistake which always occurs in such a situation is hiring of foreign experts, who despite having excellence in the concerned field are not fully aware of the above mentioned sports environments in our country. Such an expert, should be able to understand the global and local sports structure and its trends, the knowledge of event management, logistical planning, and a sound understanding of corporate and individual sponsorship, relationship of tourism and hotel industry with sports and above all the capacity to hatch a detailed marketing plan. Till hockey is marketed along professional lines its chances of growing form the shadows of cricket popularity at the national level are remote.

The hockey gurus very easily shun their responsibility for the lack of media coverage by passing the buck to the state owned electronic media for not providing adequate coverage to national and international hockey events. They blame television for giving a step motherly treatment to hockey as compared to cricket. This is true to some extent, but the fact is the non-professional attitude of the federation where a well-defined media policy for the promotion of hockey does not exist.

The promotion of a particular sport and its image building is the responsibility of the federation and not of the media. According to a news item published in a leading English daily, nearly 70% of TV viewers in urban Pakistan takes an interest in watching sports on TV. Standard Rate and Data Service (SRDS) confirms that 90% of adults in the USA read one or more magazines regularly and most of them prefer to read magazines devoted entirely to sports. The hockey federation in Pakistan must make an endeavour to introduce a regular monthly hockey magazine will inculcate a great deal of interest about hockey among the youth. It will not only fetch revenues but contribute to its development. Such magazine can also be utilized for the image building of hockey players as national sports heroes.

Television has trivialized the experience of spectator sports like hockey. The amount spent on sports TV coverage around the globe is staggering. Recently at the Sydney Olympics, a single American net work (NBC) paid $ 715 million for just buying the rights to televise the games. Keeping in view the powerful and immediate effect of electronic media on viewers, hockey organizers in Pakistan will have to make hockey more marketable. This reminds me of the loosely hanging parchments around the hockey ground during recently concluded national hockey championship. The banners carrying the name of the sponsor were probably placed around the ground at the day one of the Astroturf and heavy moisture on ground adversely effected the loosely hanging cloth, projecting a poor impression on the audience. Hockey's management can always improve the image of hockey in the mind of people by implying the modern event management techniques. The layout of ground and stadium always carry a deep impact on the audience. There are number of sports on the hockey ground and stadium which are of very high value for the advertisers, provided they are identified and exploited properly.

There is a great need for our hockey to understand the media dynamics and have well defined level of involvement with media. A professional "media relations set up" is absolutely necessary for the promotion and image building of hockey in Pakistan vis-à-vis cricket. Just look at the commentary aspect of hockey matches.

There is a strong feeling that sufficient room for its improvement is available in the presentation of hockey commentary on both TV and radio. Addition of brief English commentary to the traditional style of Urdu commentary will help the national sport in approaching the new segments of sports society and would prove extremely beneficial in elevating the image of hockey to a higher tier.

Besides a solid marketing and media strategy along with coaching institutes, and national talent hunting programmes hockey must understand and embrace in totally the concept of "Product is the King". If the technical and tactical standard of national hockey can be improved through dedicated efforts and restructuring of hockey affairs at the grass roots level. The rest will follow itself.