Odisha FC Owner Rohan Sharma: “I want the club to have the dominance of Ajax and brand of PSG”

Rohan Sharma, owner of Odisha FC is the only Non-Residential Indian (NRI) team owner in the Indian Super League. Odisha proved lucky for the club which relocated from Delhi to Bhubaneswar, within a month and went on to display some great football narrowly missing the play offs. The Playknox spoke with Rohan about the club tackling Covid-19 challenges and going full steam into the upcoming season, promoting Odisha globally and how it is an apt time for brands to partner with the club. Excerpts :

 

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on Odisha FC? How do you plan to tackle the challenges?

All the clubs have been affected by Covid-19. It has been difficult for us because we moved from Delhi to Odisha last year quite quickly which didn’t give us much time to sync our team to Odisha. This summer was important for us in terms of interacting for our grassroot programs in Odisha for both boys and girls but we missed out on it. We wanted to go around every district in Odisha to spread the brand, spread the awareness and engage everyone in football but Covid-19 has hampered things dramatically. You don’t want kids to get sick, you don’t want parents to be worried and you can’t travel because of the ban which is all quite sad as we have seen hunger from fans who want to see more Odia players in the squad and this would have been the time to do it.

We will have more guidance as everyone adjusts with the ‘new norm’. The league has already started planning for this and I think what we would do is , take a page out of the league’s book and figure out how we can use the same methods to protect us, teams and other players. Luckily, Odisha isn’t hit as hard as the other states in India and kudos to the government for acting fast to contain the situation. Also, we need to remember that we don’t want anyone to be sick on our watch and we will have to take the hard decision whether we still want to do any grassroot activation because with the way this pandemic is shaping up, we don’t want to put kids at risk

 

You reckon sporting activities should resume with measures in place? Has the club planned precautionary measures?

I do think to an extent that if it is managed correctly, things would be fine. NBA has done a good job in the US with the bubble while some leagues have been quite haphazard with their plans. NFL, I feel has not been as cautious with their players in mind. F1 seems to be doing ok. I think by not having fans, you are eliminating a lot of problems. We haven’t had a full plan from the league yet but they seem to have a good idea and good grasp of how important it is to have these precautions in place, having hygiene officers, having strict bubble for us to be playing in. These are the real things we are looking for. As a club we are following the league’s lead because we will have our own hygiene officer. The league is doing a good job of sending requirements and once we have their requirements, we too can send our requirements to them. It will be difficult, not in the way difficult to follow but a lot of coaches have their own way of doing things like having team meetings ( human interaction with the squad), the way we play and especially now that we have a new squad and a new coach.

 At the end of the day, we do want to play and I think we will lose a lot of momentum if we don’t play this season. While we are sad we won’t be able to play in Odisha this year, I still want the players to play because one year of no football will be very harmful for these young kids who are trying their best to get on their feet and try for national teams. Hopefully, with a bubble and secure rules, we should be fine.

 

 Odisha FC leveraging regional content to attract more fans in Odisha

What is the current marketing/branding strategy of the club?

We are in a very unique position and one thing I like about being part of Odisha FC is that we have a very strong local connection. We wanted to make the club part of Odisha’s culture. Our social media team has done a good job of creating content in English and local language- Odia so people can relate to us on a certain level. Through our social media, we try to market toward Odia people and we are trying to be as local as possible. But I am also trying to look at an international perspective and that’s why we have recently partnered with Halfspace Agency which is based out of the UK. I think we need to attract and capture the interest of NRI’s living abroad as the Indian diaspora is quite big. We have NRI’s living in every part of the world who are interested in the ISL. They are quite curious about watching Indians play football. Look at how EPL and LaLiga have attracted so many people in India through various outreach programs and its not like we have Indians playing in either of those leagues. We can do something similar.

 

How difficult was the relocation from Delhi to Odisha? Do you now feel home in Odisha?

Delhi wasn’t an easy place to have a football team in even if it was a good city which has more hotels and places to go. It is hard to move a club because you are losing your identity and fan base. We had a lot of debate internally about it and at first, I wasn’t on board as I didn’t want to be known as the club that moved. However, after meeting officials in Odisha, I figured it was a right move to make and I am very pleased that we moved. The hardest part apart from moving was that we moved within the month which created a lot of problems. Normally, after moves are announced, teams have an entire year to plan the moving process but we did it in a month. Initially, it was a bit tough with regards to the pitch etc. but by December we had fans coming in the stadium and it was great to have that ambiance within the Kalinga stadium. I now feel completely at home in Odisha as we have a great network of people around us here and good support from the government.

 

Odisha is heralding Sports Tourism in India. How is the club working with the government towards the same?

 Odisha is really becoming the pioneers of sports tourism in India. However, we as a team haven’t done much around sports tourism yet because we didn’t have much time in Odisha. However, I have discussed this with some government officials and decided that from next year I want more of my team and staff to promote Odisha Tourism. Due to Covid-19 situation, it is going to be harder for us to do it this year.

However, I will be working with HalfSpace and the government to figure out how we can start doing events, promotions to promote Odisha at the global stage to an international audience. The tagline of Odisha Tourism is “India’s Best Kept Secret” but we don’t want to be India’s best kept secret anymore. We want to be India’s best state.

Tell us about your latest partnerships.

Currently we don’t have much beside Serajuddin as our principal partner for which we are extremely grateful. We have partnered HalfSpace to market international brands. In this Covid-era sponsorships are a bit hard to find. However, there are industries which are growing in this era. What I want to do with HalfSpace is to find those companies and see how I can parlay Odisha FC as a club/brand to make them enter into the Indian market and Odisha and the club. For eg. Brands related to men’s grooming. We have a very young and attractive squad who are all fit.  I told HalfSpace that I want to be the combination of Ajax and PSG. I want to have the dominance of Ajax but I also want the brand of PSG where PSG has such great clothing lines, sneaking lines and everyone is wearing PSG stuff.

I want my players to be swaggy off the pitch, have the coolest jerseys and this is what I want the end game to be for Odisha FC. If you are like a real football fan in India, you would come to an OFC game because it is so much fun. Its like an event in itself. I hope the corporates can see the potential and vision of what we are trying to do.

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