Beyond the Pitch

“On All India football Federation, the premier football body of the country released its Vision Document- ‘Vision 2047’. The document is an amalgamation of different strategies, road maps, short-term goals etc. to make India compete in football. Since the document was launched, AIFF has ensured its proper implementation. The critics who claimed that it is just another document and called it a gimmick are being proved wrong every day.
We understand that one of the important aim of AIFF is to promote football culture in India. It is about making the Indians fall in love with the game. It is about exposing the Indian population to the beautiful game. An important step in this is the ground work or the field initiatives that are being taken. Apart from this, in today’s times social media has emerged as a powerful tool to take football to the masses. Numerous social media handles have a huge presence in India. Based on a report of Statista, currently India ranks second in the world in terms of social media users (around 755 million). The same is expected to cross I billion by 2027(Add chart). Individually, Indians top most of the social media handles in terms of number of users.

• As of January 2023, India has the highest number of Facebook audience- 314.6 million.
• Till January 2023, India has the highest number of Instagram users- 229.55 million.
• As of October 2023, country with largest number of YouTube users was India- 462 million.
• In case of X (formerly twitter), India comes third in terms of users- 27.25 million.
• In case of LinkedIn, India comes second behind the United States with 99 million users.

Dr. Kanishka Pandey
Head – Sports Research Centre
IMT Ghaziabad”