A new breed of creators is cultivating fandoms for sports beyond cricket

“Many basketball lovers come from humble backgrounds and do not have the proper training, and unfortunately, there also aren't many qualified coaches for the sport in the country," said Barman, who is the NBA's India pick for NBA Legends in Abu Dhabi. “So, as a thirty-year-old, when I am teaching teenagers techniques that I have learned and mastered over many years, I add value to their lives and make the sport popular."

Barman is part of a growing cohort of players-turned-creators cultivating fandoms for sports like basketball, F1, chess, running, and volleyball in the country that has the highest number of YouTube and Instagram users. And they are helping pull brands and marketers into sports other than cricket, which has a monopoly in the nation’s sporting events market, pegged by KPMG at $19 billion and projected to reach $40 billion by 2030.

“India remains cricket-dominated, generating 80-85% of sports revenue," said Prasanth Shanthakumaran, partner and head of the sports sector at consultancy firm KPMG India. “But as we advance, securing hosting rights for the 2030 Commonwealth Games and bidding for the 2036 Olympics, we're propagating other sports through diverse channels, including social media and content creation."

Sagar Shah, a chartered accountant, founded ChessBase India a decade ago after noticing a gap in mainstream media.

“When I played tournaments, I liked highlighting my experiences through blogs, but as an industry, there was hardly any coverage around chess, nor did the players post pictures or give interviews as frequently," said Shah, who was an international master with the best nationwide ranking of 30. He started documenting the journeys of various players early on, including world champion Gukesh Dommaraju and chess prodigy Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa.

“We knew that the stories of players putting in so much effort to excel in the game would resonate with the community, so we documented what they were doing to hone their skills, including their training methods, the books they were reading, etc," he said. ChessBase India has 2.89 million YouTube subscribers and 666,000 Instagram followers.

Shah credits stand-up comics who streamed chess matches during Covid—when Chess.com and Netflix's The Queen's Gambit sparked a youth frenzy—for creating a buzz around the game. He admires former world champion Viswanathan Anand for making chess more accessible and for contributing to its popularity as one of India’s top five sports.

“Back in 2023, when Gukesh did an exhibition in Mumbai, he didn’t need any security," said Shah. “But if they were to organise something similar today, they would need intricate planning with heavy security."

Brands take note

Organisers of the Prime Volleyball League (PVL) are also leaning on social media to promote the sport in India. Joy Bhattacharjya, chief executive officer of the league, attributed the over 1.1 billion viewership of its fourth season to social media and creator collaborations.

“Social media has fundamentally transformed how fans engage with and emotionally connect to sport today," Bhattacharjya. “The younger, mobile-first generation increasingly consumes sport through stories, moments, and personalities across digital platforms."

Like other influencers, such collaborations and marketing deals with brands provide creators with a steady income.

“Initially, there was hesitation around how the audience would react as I started posting basketball content in 2023, but it became easier when brands started coming in 2024 and 2025," said Sanjana Ramesh, another basketball-player-turned creator with 24,500 Instagram followers. “I started promoting health and fitness brands," said Ramesh, highlighting that brand promotional content starts from around 15,000 and can go up to lakhs depending on your followers and engagement.

Intense competition

Yet such creators face intense competition from influencers with larger followings, as brands ultimately also look at reach.

“Even if the brands partner with us because we have a dedicated audience for the sport, they also engage influencers with mass following for more visibility to attract a new audience to the sport," said F1 and motorsports content creator Aditya Dube, who has 48,700 followers on Instagram, and averages 3-4 deals a month from brands, each upwords ₹40,000.

Dube credited the F1 series on Netflix, the increasing popularity of go-karting among an experience-hungry youth, and content creators for making motorsports more popular in India in recent years. And that is drawing bigger brands like PepsiCo to partner with creators in the category.

“In a first-of-its-kind moment for both Formula 1 and brand partnerships, Sting Energy and Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team let the car deliver the news through a digital film...," said the beverage brand in a media statement in December. “Soon after the video dropped, leading creators took to social media to share their reactions and excitement about the news and the way it was communicated creatively by a car."

According to Yannick Colaco, co-founder of FanCode, Dream Sports’ streaming platform, the Indian F1 fan base has grown 32% between 2024 and 2026, going up from 60 million to upwards of 79 million, and on our platform, more than 21 million fans engaged with it, an 18% increase year-on-year. Colaco is seeing similar momentum in tennis and even newer sports like padel and pickleball, which are growing through social-first discovery and community-led participation.

“The most important thing for us is relevance. Whether a creator has 10k followers or 100k is less important than how connected a creator is to fans or potential fans of the sport," said Colaco. “The core of our brand and any association we have is to put sport as the centre of what we do."

NBA India also works “extensively with creators who have a genuine affinity for basketball and youth culture, and who can translate the game into local languages, formats and cultural contexts in a way that feels natural and credible", said Murtuza Madraswala, head of marketing, content & communications, NBA India, in an emailed response. Partnerships with basketball creators are aimed at boosting visibility for the ACG Jr., its flagship under-14 half-court tournament, he said.

Barman expects growing interest in basketball to start yielding results soon, confident that he can double his community in 2026.

“With the upcoming India Basketball League set for global telecast, I foresee creators worldwide reacting to India's rising pro basketball scene," he said. “In the next 2-3 years, Indian basketball will make waves on the global stage."