The IOC has confirmed India, Germany, Qatar, Hungary, Türkiye, South Africa and South Korea as the countries currently in the race for 2036.

Each country is trying to answer a different question: Why us?

1. INDIA — Sell the scale. India's pitch is about bringing the Olympics to one of the worlds largest and youngest populations for the first time. Ahmedabad is at the centre of the proposal, with a large sports enclave, multiple venue clusters and a focus on long-term infrastructure and legacy.
   The message is essentially: Come to India and experience sport at unprecedented scale.

2. GERMANY — Sell the legacy. Germanys Munich proposal is leaning heavily on what already exists. The 1972 Olympic Park remains central, while the concept emphasises compactness, existing facilities, short distances and sustainability.
   The pitch: Dont build an Olympic city. Reimagine one that already has Olympic DNA.

3. QATAR — Sell certainty. Qatar has perhaps the most obvious infrastructure argument. After the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Doha can point to world-class venues, transport, hotels and event-delivery experience.
   The message: We have already shown the world we can deliver mega-events.

4. HUNGARY — Sell efficiency. Budapests proposition is strikingly different. The idea being discussed is to stage the Games largely without building a new generation of giant stadiums.That makes the pitch less about spectacle and more about practicality, existing infrastructure and responsible spending.
   Pitch - A Games that doesn't need to reinvent the city.

5. TÜRKIYE — Sell geography. Istanbul has tried five times before. This is its sixth attempt.Its greatest asset remains its location: a city connecting Europe and Asia, backed by a growing sports infrastructure base and extensive experience in international events. Türkiyes pitch is almost geographical in nature: Put the Olympics at the crossroads of two continents.

6. SOUTH AFRICA — Sell history. South Africa has perhaps the most powerful emotional proposition.If successful, it would become the first African country to host a Summer Olympics.The proposed multi-city thinking around Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban also allows the country to spread infrastructure and economic impact.
   The pitch: Its Africas turn.

7. SOUTH KOREA — Sell experience.South Korea already knows how to stage the Olympics. Seoul hosted the Summer Games in 1988 and PyeongChang hosted the Winter Games in 2018.The Korean proposition is therefore built around experience, existing infrastructure, technology and sustainability, with Jeonju/North Jeolla at the centre of the current bid.
   The message: We have done this before. And we know how to do it better.

Seven countries. Seven propositions..That is what makes the 2036 race fascinating.

I tried to compare India's sporting performance at the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi, when India was the host, with the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan. At first glance, it is difficult to draw a simple conclusion.The numbers show progress in some areas, stagnation or unevenness in others, and a significant change in the character of Indias sporting performance.

So rather than saying India has improved or India has not improved, I thought it would be more interesting to simply put the two editions side by side -10 comparisons

1. Indian contingent -1982: 828 athletes
   2026: 495 athletes
   Fewer athletes in 2026 — but this was a more selective contingent.

2. Sports entered - 1982: 21 sports
   2026: 36 sports
   Indias competitive footprint is considerably wider.

3. Total medals -1982: 57
   2026: 85.
   More medals — but still below Indias record 106 at Hangzhou 2023.

4. Gold medals -1982: 13
   2026: 21
   The number of gold medals is higher, although Indias position relative to Asias leading sporting nations remains a separate question.

5. Silver medals -1982: 19
   2026: 27
   Another increase, but not one that by itself tells us about the quality or depth of the sporting system.

6. Bronze medals -1982: 25
   2026: 37
   The increase is visible here too — but bronze medals can also indicate that a sport has entered the competitive zone without necessarily reaching sustained medal-winning strength.

7. Sports in which India won medals -1982: 13 sports
   2026: 21 sports
   This may be one of the more interesting changes.Indias medals are coming from a broader range of sports than they did in 1982.

8. Dependence on athletics -1982: Athletics contributed 21 of Indias 57 medals — around 37%.2026:
   Athletics contributed 24 of Indias 85 medals — around 28%.
   Athletics remains a major contributor, but Indias overall medal portfolio is less concentrated.

9. Medals relative to the size of the contingent- 1982: approximately 6.9 medals per 100 athlete - 2026: approximately 17.2 medals per 100 athletes
   This is perhaps the most striking numerical difference — although it should not be treated as a definitive measure of sporting efficiency because team sizes, qualification standards and the sports programme have changed.

10. Indias position in Asia 1982: 5th
    2026: 4th
    A one-position movement over 44 years.But the competitive landscape has also changed substantially during those four decades, particularly with the continued dominance of China, Japan and South Korea.

So, what do these 10 numbers tell us?

What's your conclusion?

An athlete’s career has a peculiar financial curve.

Depending on the sport, an athlete may have a 5–20 year earning window. During those years, there can be a period when income is at its peak—match fees, prize money, contracts, sponsorships, endorsements and appearances.

And then, almost suddenly, the game changes.

The playing career ends. The visibility reduces. Sponsorships slow down. Match-related income disappears. But **life doesn’t retire when the athlete does.**This is where I believe Indian sport has a largely under-addressed financial problem.

We talk extensively about athlete development, performance, nutrition, sports science and infrastructure. But what happens to an athlete’s money after the peak earning years?

Most athletes are experts at their sport. They are not necessarily experts in **wealth management, asset allocation, taxation, succession planning, alternative investments or long-term financial planning.**And unlike most professionals, they have a compressed earning cycle.A corporate professional may earn and accumulate wealth over 30–40 years.

An athlete may need to create financial security in a fraction of that time.
**Perhaps we need a “Players Fund”.**Imagine a professionally managed investment platform designed specifically for athletes.During their earning years, athletes could voluntarily invest a portion of their income into the fund. The money could then be professionally allocated across a diversified portfolio of financial assets, businesses, real estate, sports-related ventures and other appropriate investment vehicles, depending on the athlete’s risk profile and financial objectives.

The objective would not simply be to “save money”.It would be to convert a short earning career into a longer financial runway.
There could even be different pools or strategies:
Career Fund — wealth creation during active years.
Post-Career Fund — income and capital preservation after retirement.
Sports Opportunity Fund — carefully evaluated investments into sports businesses, academies, technology, infrastructure and IP.
Legacy Fund — longer-term wealth and succession planning.

And this is where I think banks, wealth managers, insurers and financial institutions have an opportunity to create genuinely athlete-specific financial products.

Athletes have short careers. Their financial needs don't.
If Indian sport is serious about building a sustainable athlete ecosystem, perhaps financial security after the final whistle needs to become part of the athlete-development conversation.

I think this is a conversation worth having.

#indiasportsindustry #sports #sportsbiz #india

**Dear Madam Finance Minister: Make the Next Sports Budget a Catalyst for Investment -**The grassroots will not scale unless schools, colleges, municipalities, corporates, entrepreneurs and investors have a credible economic reason to participate.

My sincere wish for the next Union Budget is that India’s sports conversation moves from:
“How much more should the government spend?”
to:
“How much more investment can government policy unlock?”

India needs better sports infrastructure. But a predominantly top-down, government-funded approach cannot, by itself, create an efficient and sustainable sports ecosystem.
We need to make sport investable from the bottom up.

Five priorities for the next Budget:
1. Create a Sports Investment Framework
Make infrastructure, academies, sports-tech, sports science and athlete development more attractive to private and institutional capital.
2. Make public money catalytic
Use government capital to de-risk and crowd in private investment through PPPs, guarantees, viability-gap funding and blended finance.
3. Make grassroots sport investable
Enable schools, colleges, municipalities and local sporting organisations to attract corporate, philanthropic and private capital.
4. Reward utilisation, not just construction
Measure facilities by usage, participation, revenue, maintenance and sporting outcomes — not simply by how many assets are built.
5. Build the data investors need
Reliable data on facilities, utilisation, participation, costs and revenues is essential. Capital follows visibility and confidence.

This is not about reducing government support.It is about making every public rupee catalytic — capable of attracting additional capital and creating sustainable sporting assets.And this is where the grassroots can finally change.

The next Budget can therefore do more than increase the sports allocation.
It can begin building the financial architecture of India’s next sports economy.

That is how a truly bottom-up sporting ecosystem can begin to emerge.

Will the Asian Games be more than a medal tally for India — will their data be studied deeply enough to tell us whether Indian sport has truly moved to its next stepping stone? My concern: we still tend to analyse international events through the medal tally, rather than the data behind it. Aichi-Nagoya 2026, recently concluded common wealth and other international events should be studied beyond medals with data for analysis — across performance, talent pathways, coaching, sports science, infrastructure and athlete development.

India arrives with 503 athletes across 36 disciplines, after winning a record 107 medals at Hangzhou 2023. Around 314 athletes are Asian Games debutants, while 65 athletes have come through the Khelo India pathway. The contingent also includes athletes supported through TOPS, national camps and other high-performance programmes.
After Day 1, India had 2 silver medals from shooting, while medals were assured in women's cricket and MMA. Shooting alone had delivered 22 medals at Hangzhou.

So the real question for me is not simply:**How many medals will India win?**It is:What evidence will tell us that the Indian sporting system is getting better?

I would track 10 parameters:
1. MEDAL DEPTH
Not just total medals. How many different sports contribute to the tally?
2. MEDAL CONVERSION
How many athletes reach finals, semifinals and medal rounds — and how many convert those opportunities?
3. PERFORMANCE PROGRESSION
Are athletes improving against their own previous benchmarks and international standards?
4. TALENT PIPELINE
Do the 300+ debutants indicate a sustainable next generation, or are they isolated performers?
5. KHELO INDIA → ELITE
How many athletes are successfully moving from grassroots identification into national and international performance?
6. SPORTS SCIENCE
Are nutrition, biomechanics, recovery, psychology, analytics and injury prevention demonstrably integrated into preparation?
7. COACHING IP
Are successful coaching methodologies being documented and replicated — or are we still dependent on individual coaches?
8. INFRASTRUCTURE UTILISATION
Not: How much infrastructure do we have?
But: Who uses it, how often, at what level and with what outcomes?
9. ATHLETE LIFECYCLE
Are we building athletes only for medals, or also creating education, career and post-retirement pathways?
10. SYSTEM REPLICATION
This may be the biggest test.One exceptional athlete is talent.Ten athletes emerging from the same system is a pathway.Hundreds emerging consistently is an ecosystem.

And perhaps there should be an 11th parameter: LEARNING.

Do the data from these Games change India's talent identification, coaching, competition structure, sports science, infrastructure and athlete-support systems before the next major cycle?Because the medal table tells us what happened.

The data tells us why.The system determines whether we can repeat it.
For me, that is the real test of whether India has reached its next stepping stone in sport

And a big part of Indian sports industry's energy for next 2-3 years should be spent in building a sustainable sports economy.

Yes, money alone creates champions. It doesn’t.But because almost every ingredient required for sustained performance—grassroots development, infrastructure, coaching, scouting, competitions, sports science, nutrition, technology, rehabilitation and athlete support—requires a sustainable economic engine.

We spend enormous amounts of energy asking:
How do we build more infrastructure?
How do we find more athletes?
How do we improve coaching?
How do we provide sports science?
How do we increase participation?

We should also be asking:
Who pays for it?
What is the revenue model?
Can it sustain itself for 10–20 years?
What happens when the funding stops?
That is the conversation the Indian sports industry needs to have.
The objective cannot simply be to fund sporting programmes.
The objective must be to build sporting systems that can sustain themselves.

Consider some of the fundamentals:
Infrastructure -Don't measure success by facilities built. Measure it by utilisation, revenue, participation and outcomes
Sports Science -Don't treat sports science only as a cost centre for elite athletes. Build professional services that can serve academies, schools, clubs, leagues and recreational athletes.
Grassroots -Don't build programmes that survive only on grants. Create models around participation, coaching, competitions, memberships and local commercial partnerships.
Athlete Development -Don't look at athletes only as beneficiaries of funding. Build an ecosystem where athletes, coaches, academies, competitions and commercial partners all have sustainable incentives.
Coaches -Professionalise coaching as an economic profession—not an underpaid support function.

This is also where the role of government and private capital needs to be reconsidered.A large part of India's sports ecosystem is still dependent on central and state government funding.But government-funded systems can also create a different set of incentives.Private capital brings a different discipline.

This is not an argument for replacing government with private capital.
It is an argument for bringing commercial discipline into more parts of Indian sport.

That is the sports-business conversation we should be having.

A new global report points to more than $100 billion of potential investment in sports-anchored districts over the next 15 years—not just stadiums, but integrated ecosystems of sport, entertainment, retail, hospitality, residential and tourism. The global shift is from “build a stadium” to “build a destination that works 365 days a year.”

And India? Hum kahan hain isme? Almost every state has, at some point, romanticised the idea of becoming the “Sports Capital of India”, building a “Sports City”, creating a world-class sports hub or hosting the next mega sporting event. The problem? The announcements often have a much better fitness level than the projects. Many remain stuck somewhere between DPR, land, approvals, MoUs, committees and the next announcement. And this isn't a lack-of-vision problem. It is an execution problem. India already has the demand, the population, the brands, the leagues, the athletes and increasingly the capital. NITI Aayog itself has previously highlighted the need to move towards integrated, multi-use sports infrastructure and PPP models because utilisation of existing stadia remains a challenge.

The world is now treating sports infrastructure as urban and economic infrastructure—a stadium can anchor hotels, retail, offices, housing, tourism, entertainment and jobs. India has the potential to build exactly this model, but states need to move from “Sports City banayenge” to “Sports City chalayenge.” And perhaps that's the toughest job for any government—because inaugurating a stadium gets you a ribbon-cutting photograph; making it commercially viable for 365 days requires ten years of boring execution. Unless, of course, the project is connected to an election. Then suddenly, DPR bhi fast, foundation stone bhi fast, inauguration bhi fast.