ContentsProblem Statement......................................................................................................................................3

Analysis of the existing solutions:...............................................................................................................3

Proposed solution for increasing grassroots participation............................................................................6

Financial calculations for implementation.................................................................................................10

Target Business segments..........................................................................................................................10

Online Ground/Court booking system.......................................................................................................11

Summary/Conclusion................................................................................................................................12

References:................................................................................................................................................13

Problem StatementThere is an acute apathy towards sports participation and the physical well being in schools and at the grassroots level in India. With years of neglect, we have fallen far behind a lot of other countries in terms of performance in international level events like the Olympics, etc. There is no quick fix to the issue of reforming sports in the country, though a disruption in the form of using IT as a facilitator to alleviate this problem would be a very plausible step in the right direction. As another aspect of the problem of general lack of physical well being, there is a growing problem of lack of fitness among the corporate crowd, stemming from the sedentary lifestyles they lead. Hence, in totality, there is a problem of low sports participation in our country which needs to be addressed as it has repercussions on serious human development indicators such as life expectancy and average incidence of obesity, diseases,etc.

Analysis of the existing solutions:The performance of India at the Olympics previously has never been up to the mark. There always was room for improvement. But in the recent years, it has been able to improve at distinct levels.India’s Olympic medal tally has increased from zero in 1988 and 1992 to one in each in 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympics. This was followed by three medals in 2008 (including the first Gold medal) and six medals in 2012. Leading states that have contributed to India’s performance at the recent global events such as the Olympics, Common Wealth Games and Asian games are mostly Haryana and Manipur.

Situation of HaryanaGovernment of Haryana has adopted a focused approach to develop sports in the state. Its policy was launched in 2006 and from then on it has been regularly revisited and updated; one of the important feature has been the increase in incentive for sportsmen and several other such initiatives.

There are three important aspects of the state government’s policy:

1. Talent spotting and grooming:The government has launched “Play 4 India” with an aim to enable young boys and girls to realize their athletic potential and subsequently hone their skills by providing necessary support. Under this initiative, a Sports and Physical Aptitude Test (SPAT) is conducted in all schools across the state to identify high potential athlete in the 8-14 age group. About 5000 children, with boys and girls in equal numbers, are identified and a sport is allocated to them based on seven physical parameters such as strength, flexibility and the reaction time of various body parts. These students are then supported financially and provided with training, proper diet and health checkups. A yearly appraisal assesses the progress and further assistance is provided based on this

assessment. Sporting events are held from block level to the state level throughout the year for students to compete and sharpen their skills.

2. Infrastructure:To support the development of sports, the state has built the following infrastructures like:

46 schools to train athletes, including provision of free hostel, games kit and food

71 stadiums at block level with fulltime coaches, managed by district authorities, school management and parents

Sports complex in every district A sports library and a center for conducting research in sports medicine Centers of Excellence for individual sports such as academies for boxing in

Bhiwani and wrestling in Rohtak and Sonepat3. Incentives

The Government provides several incentives to winners and other stakeholders in sports:

Financial incentives, government jobs and reservation in admission to professional institutions are awarded to winners in international sports event. E.g. gold medal winner at Olympics was awarded INR 5 crores

Coaches and their places of origin: The state government of Haryana awarded with village of winning sportsperson with INR 2 lakhs for the overall development of the village.This further encourages villages to promote sports

In Manipur, the government in 2004 made policies for promoting sports across the state:

Sports and physical education was made as a mass movement Physical education was made compulsory in every education system Allocation of a high percentage of its budget towards sports and games which

was higher as compared to prominent sporting states such as Haryana and Punjab

Maintaining a culture of sports SAI established its North-eastern center at Imphal in 1986 which also

contributed to the state’s sporting success.

In Delhi, under the patronage of Government of Delhi, Sports and Youth Services was established with the aim to promote and improve sports and games in Delhi by providing opportunities and facilities to young and talented players to improve their standard in games and thereby bringing medals in Olympic, Asian Games and Common Wealth Games.

Key tournaments/activities that were undertaken are:

Sports talent search meet in different sports discipline Summer sports meet Organization of All India Rajiv Gandhi Gold Cup Tournament in various

disciplines Organization of various district and inter district tournaments Organization of block level and inter- block level tournament and participation

of Delhi school teams in All India Rural Sports Tournament Participation of Delhi school teams in national school games To conduct regular coaching camp round the year and selection of team for

national and international tournaments and participation their-after

After analyzing Haryana, Manipur and New Delhi, and other government policies and other initiatives to promote sports, now we will look at Mumbai where association like MSSA are playing a major role in promoting sports across schools.

In Mumbai, associations like MSSA, are present with the objective to foster physical fitness and discipline through active sports and games participation amongst thousands of school going students of the city of Mumbai. Tournaments of various games are conducted throughout the year.

Recently Mumbai school sports association (MSSA) launched an academy called “football for girls” for football specifically focusing schooling girls. Training would be given to under 14 and under 16 age group girls from school across Mumbai. MSSA will select the girls for training which will be a year round affair with two sessions planned for each week. Players will later be selected to represent the academy team.

Many academies are affiliated to MSSA which train school going kids under different age groups across schools in Mumbai. To name a few, there is Bipin Football Academy, St Lawrence Football Club, Bombay Gymkhana Limited and VPN Sports Club.

A total of 20 sports are included in MSSA. Through its tournaments and competitions, several school children were nurtured to give national and international laurels for the country.

To promote various school sports in Mumbai, the IPL team of Mumbai Indians sponsored MSSA to develop and support sports tournament amongst all Mumbai schools.

Following are few of the existing issues with the present sports facilities in India:

Functioning of sports ecosystem

Issues

Overall - Lack of sports culture in India- Limited funding avenues in sports

Sports governance - Lack of transparency- Limited community level engagement in sports despite

the Panchayat Yuva Krida Aur Khel Abhiyan (PYKKA)- Limited commercial focus of governing bodies

Talent scouting and training of players

- Lack of coaches and technical know-how on sports in India

- Lack of coordination among the concerned bodies affecting professional uptake of sports

- No proper support to former sportsperson launching private academies

- Scarcity of playing spaces- Lack of awareness on opportunities for sports coaches

Leagues and tournaments - Lack of transparency in the governance of leagues- Poor monetization of league- Limited engagement of franchises with local communities

Performance incentives for sportspersons

- Lack of policy ensuring financial security post retirement for some players

- Limited career options within the sports ecosystem.

Proposed solution for increasing grassroots participationWe propose to make use of Information Technology to improve the grass root level sports participation and make efficient use of resources available. A networked infrastructure can be created to track development of players. Once a student starts playing any sport at school level, the student’s data is recorded in a database which will also track the competitions the student has played in, performance in those competitions and the current location along with the contact details where the student is studying. There will be a central database where all of the information will be stored.

The access to the information will be restricted to only the Sports ministry at the higher level, registered coaches, coaching centre, parents and clubs for each sport at the school and club level. This kind of central database will ensure the overall development of talent; ensure that the talent does not get lost from the system and will provide equal opportunities to all the budding sportsmen. To implement this type of infrastructure we will need to ensure that the following are in place:

1. Central Database- that can handle large amounts of data.

2. Interactive web user interface - facilitate ease for anyone to analyse and retrieve relevant information.

3. Network Security- protection from information theft and information manipulation

4. Disaster recovery plan

For the database we can use any one of Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server. The website can be constructed using HTML, CSS, Javascript/Jquery and one of PHP, Python, Perl. Network security protocols that can be implemented are TLS and IPsec. Information will have to be stored in encrypted format. The cluster model will repeat from sports club to state level and followed by national level. Through this clustering model and with the use of portal, a talent can be recognized at the very grass root level and can be trained accordingly to develop a better sports future for the country.

Database

A database is an organized collection of records or data that can be searched, retrieved and modified. Database software is commonplace as most standard office computer software packages usually have a simple database program as well, in addition to the usual word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications.

There is a still powerful and useful database in the area of sports management than the one that comes in the standard software suite, the relational database. A relational database is a data management system that stores information in a series of tables in the form of rows and columns of data. When the user conducts a search, a relational database allows him to match and join data from one table with data from a second to produce a third table or a report.

The IT tools would majorly play an important role from an operational point of view manifested by the kinds of sport program information that can be part of these databases:

Primary specific information like biographic data including name, sex, age, contact information and even clothing sizes for students can be contained. The same database may also contain details on medical conditions, performance history, or other participation characteristics of the students/ potential athletes.

The database can also be keyed in with information pertaining to the staff roster supporting the programme on connecting sports talent.

Money is a central driver in any form of sports management today. Databases can be used for tracking donors or potential donors and hence help in fundraising. Attributes related to this can be biographic data of donors, frequency with which they have donated, etc.

Interactive Web Portal

The process of generating a web-based high school level youth sports and adult sports league website portal includes obtaining at least one of high school level, youth level, club level, or adult league sports based content. The process further includes generating web pages for at least one of states, schools, teams, players, and students allowing users to view content and directing central/state government authorities to the users through interaction with the web pages based on their rankings and previous achievements in this field.

Many previous approaches to creating centralized network via the World Wide Web have not been directed to youth sports or club sports. These approaches did not include any ability to display beneficial information for the athlete or student and/or State/Central Government and approaching them could then be handled.

Accordingly, there is a need for a web portal that can provide a centralized expression networking and moreover allow for targeted government agencies to contact them.

The innovation can be in the form of a centralized database and portal system that is sports and/or student-activity specific. Accordingly, it may encompass content based on students playing sports from their first sports experiences through high school sports. These sports include high school sports, youth sports, club sports, and/or other sports organizations whose participants may include ages till high school age athletes. Users of the system are provided with various web-based tools to generate and create their personal expression. National level referees would be allotted to give ratings to these students. These tools include various different functions including various sports, all level players in that sport across all the states. It is a multi-task tool that allows young students and/or student athletes to present their academic, athletic and other accomplishments via a creative and dynamic tool.

India

State-wise PortalCity-wise Portal

Sports-wise Portal

This portal would be connected to the centralized relational database. All these links would be updated on real time basis. The major links would be to fetch the information about students of different sport, state and/or city. Further, it could act as a forum to invite various central and state level organizations and fetch the player on the basis of their rating (which would also be available on website). Moreover, certain advertisements for referees who would be the students can also be displayed here.

In terms of security, a private key would be provided to all the central/state level organizations and a public key would be available to all the students and volunteers who want to create their profile. Only the central/state government would have access to this database. Though the add function would be available, we would restrict the write/update function to the main authorities only. Further, individual accounts of students could be monitored and secured by ID + password combination.

Financial calculations for implementationWe estimate that there would be very high fixed costs involved as mentioned below:

1. Software development: Rs. 5 lakhs2. Database management system: Rs. 15 lakhs3. Improvement in network infrastructure: Rs. 10 lakhs

So to implement this in any city we would require Rs.25 lakhs since software development is a onetime overall cost.

The variable components will be in the form of the following:

1. Employee wages2. Maintenance costs3. Backup maintenance cost/Disaster recovery cost

Overall we assume that these costs will be around Rs. 4 lakhs per annum.

In terms of returns on investment, there won’t be any tangible short term benefits but in the long run the performance of our sportsmen will be expected to improve. As our sportsmen become more competitive internationally, we will have more sponsorship, more tournaments and more viewers for different sports which will increase revenue for the government in the form of taxes. Also, research papers have concluded that growth in performance in sports is accompanied by growth in GDP of the country. We expect that these benefits will become visible from the 10th year of the implementation of this system.

Target Business segmentsDue to the high costs involved and the relatively high timeline in getting returns we do not expect the private players to enter into this model until it has matured and starts giving returns instantaneously. Therefore the government must undertake this project. The government currently spends 100 million dollars per year on sports. Therefore we feel that this project can be undertaken by the government.

The target cities should be the metro cities and the connected rural areas right next to these cities. Once the system matures in these cities we can then look towards the other rural areas. The target segment is basically government and private schools. This is required for total inclusion in sports participation.

Online Ground/Court booking systemThe second solution that we propose is to increase participation in sports amongst professionals. We believe that if the ‘would be’ parents are more involved in sports this will encourage the future generations to also participate. Currently the situation is that the societies coming up in cities are cramped up for space and the little space that is left is used for vehicle parking. People don’t get space to play near their home. The next option is to move to gymkhana grounds but even there most of the times the ground is full and considering the shortage of time most of people then refrain from making the trip. We therefore propose an online ground booking system so that the people booking the ground/court are assured of their playing time.The general pattern of booking a stadium in India is very vigorous. It is manual mostly and involves a person to go visit the booking center and book the stadium. This is a simple but tiresome process. Also another thing observed is that many a time’s grounds and stadiums are not booked because of lack of information about availability and location. If this activity could be done online, it would be of great benefit to the parties involved and the sporting industry in itself. We suggest launching a website which contains details of all the grounds and stadiums available in the nearby location, which would give the current status of the ground or stadium that is if it is being used by anyone currently, slots available to book, cost of booking etc. This website not just caters to the booking of big stadiums but also the small grounds and stadiums. The advantage of this would be, resources could be used effectively which will help in nurturing the talent we have.

Implementation:

We require laptop computers, Personal Digital Assistances (PDAs), and mobile phones in addition to website, database.Step 1:Acquiring and storing Data: The information related to presence and availability of grounds and stadiums can be acquired from government records and involving parties of benefit. This data will be stored using oracle, sql or using preferable object-relational data management system.

Step 2:Creating a website:DevelopmentThe prototype developed Using ASP.netprogramming language environment(Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express)prototype will be developed.In this level booking for grounds and stadiums prototype will be developed. This prototype will be used as method. Prototype process include three steps-

Interacting between the prototypes and the users. Users can have an adequate idea of their information requirements.

Users approved the application that is if it can be used as a final system

The prototype will be evaluated after this development phase.Buy a register a domain name and create a website which contains all essential features of booking a stadium or data. Adequate security measures shall be taken so that the data doesn’t fall into the hands of a wrong party and get manipulated.

System Design:The design of system includes unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram and the sketch of system architecture.

Figure: Case for the Prototype

The above figure describes the overall interaction between the prototype and the user as how the user will start the process of ground and stadium booking.The case diagram models the functionality of the users as the actors in the system.

Summary/ConclusionOur suggestions can only enable people to participate more in sports. These two solutions will cater to the needs of the people who want to play. To get more people interested in sports we feel the government should come up with more tournaments at each age level. Also, sports should be made a compulsory part of the education system and not just a formality like it is done in some schools currently.

References:1. Youth & Sports at KPMG

http://www.kpmg.com/IN/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/Business-of-Sports.pdf

2. Sports& Youth Services by Government of Delhihttp://delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/9b3425804ff1f977bef6bfd9d1b46642/Sports+%26+Youth+Services+WU89.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&lmod=336697604&CACHEID=9b3425804ff1f977bef6bfd9d1b46642

3. Mumbai School Sports Association (www.mssa.co.in)4. http://thesportjournal.org/article/information-technology-for-sports-management/ 5. https://books.google.co.in/books?

id=_E_1Sn_SmvIC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=schools+information+technology+connect+sports+database&source=bl&ots=o2oQRycFkv&sig=WbBafczb1kMQZkmWI5FQYPqmjdQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TpHzVOuWKcKruQS_woLQBw&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=schools%20information%20technology%20connect%20sports%20database&f=false

6. www.us.edu 7. Alfawaer, Z. M., Awni, M., & Al-Zoubi, S. (2011). Mobile e-ticketing reservation

system for Amman International Stadium in Jordan. International Journal of Academic Research, 3(1), 848-852.