New Delhi: There’s a good chance that you’ve heard of the popular expression – there’s a time and place for everything… if it is so, then shouldn’t Sports Authority of India (SAI) come up with a better excuse for allowing a massive concert to happen in a venue meant primarily for track and field events? Sure, Diljit Dosanjh is a live wire performer, whose concerts have kept audiences enthralled (diaspora included) across the world, but a Sports’ venue is sacrosanct and if should be left that way. Critics who have come out opposing such blatant misuse of India’s sporting venues, and Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium aka JLN being one of the best, have some very fair arguments to make.
For one, should there be a price tag for sporting venues and who should decide what is the cost of such an event? Second, the onus of restoring the venue to its original condition should rest with whom? And third, why should one suffer or compromise so that another can reap the benefit? These are germane questions that SAI cannot defer from answering. Nor can they shake it off saying that everything is hunky dory.
The Dil-Luminati concert, held over two days, was a massive success with the crowds of Delhi NCR. But the afterparty is not good news, neither are facts that have come out of the Pandora’s Box ever since sprinter Beant Singh voiced his dissent. The venue has been littered badly and there have been accusations of vandalism too, athletes say they have been tasked with the clean-up job because sponsors of the concert left without doing anything much in the name of restoration. Also, prior to the event on Saturday, some athletes even complained that they were asked to train in a track that was outside of the main track. SAI, on its own accord, has rubbished these aspersions, saying it is more drama than anything else. This is not the first time that JLN has hosted an event, is their response.
Stadiums for gigs, but at what cost?
There are rumours that SAI was offered Rs 2 crore for the concert at JLN although the Sporting body has not clarified on the revenue share. This is not the first mega event to have been hosted at the JLN, the one prior to this being the Bryan Adams and many more that were held before this. But when did the trend of hosting gigs at stadium venues erupt into the scene in India?
In 2015, the Delhi government had introduced a ‘single-window permission system’ for gigs and other events. This was done to make the Capital more gig-friendly at the time. An image makeover that it desperately needed because other cities (like Bengaluru and Hyderabad) were running away with the accolades of hosting the best events in India.
However, Delhi doesn’t have a single concert hall, and has been criticised heavily due to the same. Remember conductor Zubin Mehta who come down heavily at authorities when he was forced to perform in JLN Stadium in 2015? There are others like him who have time and again reiterated their stance that the Capital desperately needed a venue for gigs.
In the absence of concert halls or any other large-scale venue, the stadiums in Delhi are being frequently being used for gigs. They come under the Sports Authority of India (SAI) and not under the Delhi government, and therefore, didn’t have the single-window system. Even stadiums as venues as an idea didn’t fly well with organisers who found it a herculean task to book such grounds for their gigs. It was only in 2017, that SAI re-introduced the cumbersome application process of booking stadiums and made it easier to apply for the same.
This has also added significantly to the revenue of stadiums. According to a 2017 article in the Times of India daily, “the cost of booking a stadium ranges from Rs 2.5 lakh per day to Rs8 lakh per day. SAI officials say that JLN Stadium, Dhyan Chand National Stadium and Indira Gandhi Stadium Complex receive the maximum requests for events.” In 2024, the costs would have risen further, especially for high-ticket celebrity performers.
If Diljit Dosanj was paid Rs 1 crore for both the days of the concert, and his ticket sales worldwide generated Rs 234 crore across North America, and ticket sales reached up to $64,000 in re-sale, one can only imagine the kind of revenue that SAI should have made more moolah from renting out JLN for the event.
But did they? And if not, is it worth it to expose such grounds to huge crowds when a sporting event is on the anvil?
What’s in it for the athletes?
So, performers make a killing from these events, organisers too go laughing to their banks. The crowd is satiated with what they saw and the time they had. It is the athletes, it seems, who end up on the wrong side of the bargain. They neither get a share in the pie for compromising on the venue for training purposes, nor do they get free passes to the event. “All that we get is to come back to clean the venue if we have to make it sport ready. It has happened in the past, it’s Deja-vu now. We have been cleaning up alcohol bottles and tickets from the ground since the concert ended,” an athlete, who spoke anonymously to the media, said.
Although SAI has refuted claims of misuse of the venue vehemently, they have not had an answer as to why sportspersons were asked to train elsewhere just so that the organisers could plan ahead of the gig. This and many other issues need to be tackled in a transparent manner.
Until that happens, the government may want to dedicate an exclusive large arena for larger concerts.
If not, Bollywood may have to open it’s doors to indoor and outdoor sporting events. We are thinking the opulent sets of ‘Koffee With Karan’ with Alexa switching on the “dramatic lights” and Jaquar fittings and other designer elements would make for a decent Table Tennis match venue? What say?
