Competing on a different ground

For most part of his life, Hemant Sharma played cricket. But when he applied for college admissions in 2009, football took over. “I didn’t know anything apart from kicking the ball. Out of 22 sports quota applicants, I was the only one selected. That day onward, it has always been about football,” recollects Sharma. He adds, “For 90 minutes, you are in the game, you can make that difference. You are always on your toes. That is what changed my thinking of playing, and the love-affair only grew.”

While pursuing his graduation from Delhi University’s Sri Venkateswara College, Sharma was approached by video gaming platform Federation of Gamers (FoG) to form and lead their football team, in 2012. After a successful association with them, FoG suggested a similar sports event to be spearheaded by him to promote football for corporate professionals.

“The idea was to promote football, which was taking a second seat in a cricket dominated country. Corporate barely get time from their busy schedule to play or do anything apart from work. We thought of making a platform where they could get involved,” the 24-year-old tells Metrolife.

After the success of the first corporate event in July 2012, Sharma went on to organise it on a larger scale on a regular basis and decided to call it ‘Legends Cup’. This soon became the ‘biggest’ corporate football tournament.

Organised by Sharma and his two friends and co-founders, Arpit Gupta and Geetika Bahl, the Legends Cup is a two-day football tournament with a six-a-side format with companies from Delhi NCR. What started as small time sports events in college for Sharma has now turned into a property which has seen participation from over 150 corporate including Deloite, Genpact, Sapient and Adidas among others.

The championship has now stretched its borders to form a national league with tournaments across Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi. The Delhi Chapter, which will be the last of the three city leg, will be held on November 7-8 with over 40 teams from companies like American Express, Mitsubishi, PWC, Serco and Accenture among others playing. This will be followed by a final match on December 5-6 in the city. “Initially, we only approached 16 teams including Deloite and Ernst and Young with only 200 people.

In terms of expansion, we have grown to 2,000 people and we have 42 teams in Delhi, 45 in Mumbai and 37 in Bengaluru which are biggest numbers in the last 20 years of football history of corporate tournaments,” points out Sharma. As the winning team from the finals will be flown to London with all their expenses paid to experience an English Premier League match, he divulges that getting the attention of the sponsors in the initial days was a challenge. “At first, we didn’t go for any sponsors. We were open to all. But when we started understanding the dynamics of the event, that’s when we realised the potential,” states Sharma.

While they admit that the sponsorships make the tournament a lucrative one, they say that it is a way to pump in the money to their smaller properties like Legends Cup Junior for children. “People from even small countries like Bangladesh play better than India. We have the potential, but don’t have the facilities to go with it. How can one train if they don’t have footballs to start with? Ample opportunities and facilities are needed and that requires funding.”