Loyalty is a concept in sport dearer to fans than players. Fans often expect players to remain loyal to their club regardless of the circumstances. They boo them when it is perceived that they changed clubs for a better payday. Football fans are notorious for this, booing home-side favourites as if they were expected to stick to one club all their life. No one, after all, expects any other professional to stay forever with the outfit they joined when just out of university.
Some fans believe players take the field only to entertain them and to foster a sense of belonging and to give them a modicum of reflected glory. And if their favourite player moves to another team, they feel divided and cheated.
No other professional changing jobs has to endure fans of his previous place of work lining up outside his room or cubicle and shouting at him. I started my career with a newspaper in Bengaluru and in about three years had moved to another in Chennai. It wasn’t seen as a betrayal, merely as a youngster getting better opportunities.
Sportspeople whose careers are short and could get shorter through injury, indiscipline or politics, have the right to perform wherever their talents take them. They too have families to look after, a need to save for the future and play wherever they feel most comfortable doing so. Footballer Chuni Goswami played for just one club, Mohun Bagan, throughout his career, and was lauded for it. Yes, this is a special relationship, but his contemporaries who moved to other clubs were not traitors.
Except for the period when Chennai Super Kings were banned, their captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been with them, winning five titles. That is an amazing record. Virat Kohli’s stay at the Royal Challengers Bangalore hasn’t been as productive, but has been longer. His greatest regret as another IPL season ends is that he has not finished on a title-winning side. Yet if these two modern giants were to change teams now, there would be an outcry from fans. Such is the nature of sport. Every time I see a journalist ask a sportsman why he switched clubs, I expect a retort along the lines of: “Have you never changed jobs? Why did you do it?” But sportsmen are trained to be bland and politically correct at press conferences, and they are exactly that.
Players often discover that loyalty is not a two-way street. Clubs aren’t as loyal to them as they are expected to be to the clubs.
Loyalty, of course, has nothing to do with winning or losing. It is about emotion. Player loyalty leads to fan loyalty (fans often switch loyalty when players move), and that leads to greater marketing opportunities for clubs who connect with fans beyond match days.
Loyalty is rewarded in myriad ways that benefit the clubs, from merchandising their products to arranging for special ‘fan days’ where fans can meet their heroes. Loyalty drives revenue. Harnessing the devotion of fans is important for clubs.
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