In the beginning, there were Arnold Palmer and Mark McCormack. The two shook hands on a golf course in 1960 and the simple gesture of agreement ushered a new era in sports. The genesis of the cricketing behemoth that is the Indian Premier League (IPL) can thus be traced to that faraway day some 48 years ago when sports marketing was born.

Revenue projected at $1.2 billion is not a sneeze. Lalit Modi, the latter-day Kerry Packer, would have made the late McCormack proud. After all, the Packers and Modis of the World have carried forward the legacy of IMG’s founder who stressed on appeal rather than success or failure while selling a sport or a sportsperson to a prospective sponsor.

It was McCormack who first saw the immense financial potential of sport if it was showcased as entertainment that went beyond statistics of who did what. He realised that the key to the riches was television. He equated sport to business with marketing as the critical component.

The National Basketball Association League, the Major League Baseball and the National Football League as they are structured today are based on McCormack's footprints.Ditto, the English Premier League and now, we have the IPL that has taken cricket to a financial level that few even can comprehend.

The multi-million dollar deals through sale of TV rights and the auctioning of players, has triggered conflicting emotions ranging from admiration to outright condemnation resembling the kind of breast-beating we see at a funeral.

If cricket cast a shadow on other sports in India that have gradually begun to wither in the absence of “sunshine,” then the IPL, I believe, has pushed them to the edge of a bottomless precipice.

Some might view cricket as a curse and an incurable obsession in India. There is a strong belief that popularity of cricket and the mass appeal that the top players enjoy has lured prospective sponsors away from other sports.

To an extent, this is true, but in the context of the highly commercialised world that we live in, such a scenario is to be expected.

The truth is that almost all the administrators of non-cricketing sports in India live a cocooned existence, wrapped in mothballs. In fact, I am tempted to brand the “lesser sports” also as an IPL - the Indian Poverty League!

One only needs to look at the state of affairs of some of the so-called major sports like hockey and football.

If a Dhoni is paid $1.5 million dollars for a 44-day hit-about, besides a “pittance” of $ 6,000 per game when representing the country, the Indian hockey players did not receive a single rupee for the five-Test series against Belgium last month. In fact, there was no title sponsor! Last year, the hockey players had to threaten a hunger strike to earn a few lakhs of rupees from reluctant employers after winning the Asia Cup.

As for Indian football, money is not an issue, but governance is, as in the case of almost every other sport.

Top footballers earn sarlaries comparable to those in the IT industry. Yet, barring a Bhutia, they play and perform in virtual anonymity despite a few regions where they enjoy star status. 

If anything, the IPL has proved that sport is an industry and not a pastime. One might berate the sponsors for forking out millions and fear for the young boys from middle-class families growing rich overnight and fall prey to the attendant temptations of stardom, but you cannot stop this juggernaut called commerce.

Rather than envy cricket, the other sports would do well to first admit that they have been caught napping. Living on government doles has turned their administrators blind to reality that it is a highly competitive world where what matters is the bite, not the bark.

At the end of the day, you cannot blame the franchises for choosing to ride piggyback on cricket. They have sunk millions because they are assured of matching returns. The bottomlines are lucrative.

If any other sport in India could offer such a win-win situation, then we wouldn’t be discussing the IPL alone.

In conclusion, the IPL is a final wake-up call for other sports in India. Either they shape up or ship out.

(The writer is a senior sports journalist.)