Our Submission on the Draft National Sports Policy, 2024

The draft National Sports Policy 2024 aimed to make sport a grassroots movement while promoting national excellence, economic growth and social development. AM Sports Law & Management Co. welcomed it as an important commitment to India’s sporting culture, and our submission of 27 October 2024 focused on how its vision could be carried through.

Implementation and alignment

We recommended specific targets with deadlines and periodic reporting, along the lines of the European Union’s approach and Australia’s Sport 2030, which sets measurable goals such as gender parity in participation. We suggested aligning the policy with the National Education Policy 2020 and with skilling initiatives under the National Skill Development Corporation and its sports sector skill council, so that schools can offer vocational subjects related to the sports industry, and integrating the National Sports Talent Search Scheme for children aged 8 to 12. For TOPS, we highlighted the value of aligning federations, the Sports Authority of India and the scheme’s administrators on questions such as early specialisation.

Integrity education

The policy can do more to educate every stakeholder on anti-doping, POSH, POCSO, age fraud and whistleblower protection, building on initiatives such as NADA’s MoU with National Law University, Delhi. Education works best when it speaks to the athlete’s own interest. Live matches command high broadcast fees because the result is unknown, and manipulation that makes outcomes predictable reduces viewership, revenue and, in the end, athletes’ earnings, as IPL viewership showed after the 2013 match-fixing allegations.

Athlete welfare

We recommended dedicated mental health support for national and international athletes, including help with online abuse; support for life after sport, drawing on the Athletes Care Service at the Sant Cugat High-Performance Centre in Spain; dual-career programmes such as those in Flanders, where promising young athletes may miss up to six hours of school a week for training, and Denmark, which funds tutoring for school missed for national team duty; and employment pathways with companies, following Germany’s model of compensating employers of athletes through the German Sports Aid Foundation.

Growth, technology and integrity

Further recommendations covered partnerships between technology firms, medical companies and sports organisations, building on the National Centre of Sports Sciences and Research; support for leagues that bring international talent to India, given that of more than 30 leagues started between 2008 and 2018 only seven reached a second season; a production-linked incentive scheme for sports equipment; community sports centres close to residential areas; sustainability practices aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals; recognition and structured support for esports; a framework against competition manipulation informed by the Macolin Convention; and reformative sports programmes for juveniles.

Learning from abroad

Australia’s participation and high-performance strategies for Brisbane 2032, China’s targets for sports facility space and venue construction, and the EU’s Erasmus+ sport actions offer models India can adapt, particularly with an eye on 2036.

Conclusion

The draft policy covered the right ground. Clear implementation strategies, timelines, benchmarks and accountability, with gains reinvested in talent, infrastructure and communities, would turn its vision into results. The Khelo Bharat Niti, approved in July 2025, has since taken this work forward.