Bangladeshis have always been very interested in sports. In the past, there was a period of time when Bangladeshis were absolutely crazy about football.
Every person in the country was excited, and entire cities stood still on Derby Day. In recent times, that hysteria and mania has become focused almost entirely on cricket.
The craze over following sports has not changed, but a lot other things have. Since the time that Bangladesh was enraptured by local football, televisions have become commonplace in households, and the online presence of Bangladeshis has gone through the roof, particularly on social media platforms such as Facebook.
So, when you put those factors together, you’d think Bangladeshis would have come up with new and innovative ways of keeping up with the sports that they love. But there are many failures and inadequacies.
The biggest failure of the Bangladeshi media in terms of the variation of content displayed is probably not having a TV channel dedicated to sports in a nation that is crazy about sports.
The excuse of not having enough resources or not making enough profit to keep a sport channel running doesn’t really stand up anymore, considering the fact that there are currently 29 local TV channels on the air at the moment in Bangladesh, and they pretty much broadcast the same content.
So, if those channels are surviving and thriving, why can’t a channel that only broadcasts sports? The other argument that is used against the idea of having a dedicated sport channel is that broadcasting rights are expensive and difficult to obtain.
While that might be true, a counter argument could be that a few Bangladeshi channels have gotten broadcasting rights for some of the top sports leagues in the world before, so it can’t be that difficult to get.
Despite all the arguments against having a dedicated sports channel, it could be argued that such a channel would do even better than regular channels. This is mainly due to the audience that a sports channel would have.
A very minimal scanning of the sports-related groups on Facebook will give anyone an idea about just how much people are into sports, especially cricket and football.
A huge number of people live and breathe these sports, and have a genuine desire to enjoy the broadcasting of certain events that are ignored for understandable reasons by the foreign sports channels they are forced to follow.
For example, all the cricket leagues that are on throughout the year like the NPL, DPL, and such would have massive following on TV. Cricket wouldn’t be the only sport that would be displayed, of course.
If a sports channel was to be established in Bangladesh, we could perhaps be looking at a rise in quality across all sports, similar to India, which has managed to popularize and promote sports that were previously thought to be not mainstream over there, like badminton and kabaddi.
The controlling boards of the sports in Bangladesh could also get involved in this process. The Bangladesh Cricket Board may have to take the lead, but other boards could also help out according to their funding.
The broadcasting of different local sports played by Bangladeshis will inspire a lot of people, and will create incentives for players, which will mean sports will grow, and a sporting culture will start to develop. Sponsors will start appearing too. And who knows, maybe that elusive Olympic medal will follow soon after.
After all is said and done, it really comes down to something very simple.
There is a demand in the market that is being met rather unsatisfactorily by foreign sports channels at the moment.
That doesn’t need to be the case. A local sports channel could take control of the market, and all the spoils that come with it, while impressing and satisfying audiences. So, no matter what happens in the game, the people on either side of the screen will always win.
Nibir Mostafa Khan is a Content Writer for BeLocal Today. He writes from Australia.
