Football or Egg?

What are the Venky’s Chicken People up to by trying to take over the Blackburn Rovers? Is it a new-found fondness for football or a way to advance their poultry business?

On any other day, Blackburn Rovers would be just another football club in a quiet East Lancastrian town of the UK, trying to survive the madness that is the English Premier League. It would be playing a brand of football that corresponds with the inscription on the club crest: Arte et Labore, which loosely translates to ‘By skill and hard work’.

But today, and possibly for the past week or so, Blackburn are all over the newspapers, especially in India. This is an unusual experience for a club that is by no means a title contender, often satisfied in its little ambition of top-flight survival. The fuss is because it has been taken over by Venkateshwara Hatcheries, a poultry company based in Pune. The ‘Venky’s Chicken People’, as they’re known, have reportedly agreed to purchase the club from the current owners, Jack Walkers’ Supporters Trust, for £46 million (the club was on sale for £26 million, with £19 million in piled up debt).

Blackburn’s takeover should not be seen as a surprise. One, they were available on the cheap. Two, not so long ago, there were two Indian individuals keen to purchase the club and turn it around. Saurin Shah, nephew of Indian cricket board secretary Niranjan Shah, and Ahsan Ali Syed, a Bahrain-based Indian businessman, tried buying the club. But they were unsuccessful in their respective attempts. Syed was the more serious contender, given that he promised the club’s fans and its manager a transfer-kitty of over £100 million to revamp Blackburn and make them a force in the Premier League. But his company
in Bahrain was ordered shut by the sheikhdom’s authorities on account of legal violations.

According to Alan Nixon, a Blackburn fan and football-writer with Daily Mirror, ‘Somebody at the ground made a rather profound statement on this to me the other day. The Rovers don’t really want someone with supposed huge cash and would rather have someone a bit smaller. It fits the way the club is.’ The perception one gets from Nixon’s assessment and various Blackburn Rovers fan sites is that the Venky’s deal brings them a sense of stability, given that the Indian company’s corporate values blend nicely with those the club was founded upon. According to sources within Blackburn Rovers, even the Mahindra Group was interested in a takeover of the club, before Venky’s made the best offer. Blackburn may be a small club, but now presents the company a large reach of over 200 countries (the number of countries the Premier League is telecast live in).

However, irrespective of our immediate pride, and cutting through the ‘writing back to the Empire’ jingoism doing the rounds, it will take time for the two sides—Blackburn and Venky’s—to win each other over.

According to Mark Ogden, The Daily Telegraph’s northern football correspondent, the initial reactions of fans have been hostile. He says in an email interview, ‘Within Blackburn, there is a growing hostility to the takeover, for two reasons. Firstly, the fans have been underwhelmed by the talk of small investment in the team and the use of the loan market for players.’

The second aspect of the growing hostility involves a decision by Venky’s to rename Ewood Park, the Rovers’ home ground. ‘The plan to sell the naming rights to Ewood Park is very unpopular,’ says Ogden. ‘Fans believe this means selling their history and tradition, and that cannot be underestimated in English football.’
That is why one gets the feeling that this could be a hop-on/hop-off deal for Venky’s, a kind of deal where you pick up a club, and then make a buck by selling it at  a higher price in two years. This, some fear, might not be the kind of deal where there is investment over time in pushing up quality.

Venky’s engagement with Blackburn could well be driven by other ambitions—possibly, the European poultry market. Speaking at a press conference, Anuradha Desai, managing director of the Venky’s Group, said, “Football is a popular game everywhere and I feel that Venky’s brand will get immediate recognition if we take over this club. This is the main reason why we are doing this.”

The prospective Blackburn takeover is an excellent story of an Indian corporate trying to make an English football club relevant to today’s football discourse, which thrives on the monetary narrative thanks to the likes of Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour.

It is true that the growing maturity of the Indian football market is drawing some top English Premiership clubs. Manchester United have designed an ‘India Project’, conducted through two years of market research. Sources say they might sign up popular Indian cricketers who support the club to take it mass market here. There is a desire to visit India around 2011. Phillip Townsend, Manchester United’s director of communications, says, “We want to visit India, but unfortunately, our schedules don’t permit that, as our off-season coincides with your monsoon.” Casper Stylsvig, Manchester United’s sponsorship manager told The Telegraph earlier this year, “In Europe, 86 per cent of all sponsorship goes to sport. In India, that figure is just 10 per cent. We expect that to change. Football is the second-most popular sport behind cricket in India and there is a huge English-speaking audience who actively watch football.”

What does the Blackburn deal mean for India, then? Does it benefit Indian football, or is it just Brand Venky’s which takes home the spoils? Marketing consultant Harish Bijoor says, “I think Venky’s is lacking in terms of sales, but the proposed buyout will give them wider reach. Most of all, the brand will get a positive stroke.”

At this moment, given the atmosphere surrounding the takeover, the Blackburn deal might just have its immediate benefits in England, and until the club decides to take its secondary market—that is India—along, the deal might not mean much here. In an interview with Lancashire Telegraph, Anuradha Desai has said, “Blackburn Rovers will, of course, play in India also. The timing and other details will be worked out in due course.”

A successful run with the Rovers could give other potential Indian investors the requisite confidence to take English football seriously, and bid for more ambitious clubs like Tottenham and Everton. But Indian mass interest in English football will probably take wing only once an Indian footballer gets to cluck on the Premiership stage. Which will come first, we know not.

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