1. Introduction: Why This Was Never About Messi

The events surrounding Lionel Messi’s appearance in Kolkata quickly became a national talking point. For many, the reaction centred on disappointment, anger, or blame. But framing this episode as a failure tied to one individual or one evening misses the point entirely. This was never about Messi. What unfolded was a reminder of a deeper, recurring challenge in Indian sport — the way international sporting events are planned, governed, and delivered. Celebrity appearances, exhibition tours, and one-off spectacles often generate enormous public enthusiasm, yet that energy is routinely undermined by fragile organisational structures and inconsistent execution. The outcome is predictable: high expectations, uneven delivery, and erosion of fan trust.

These moments matter because they are not isolated. They sit within a broader context where India aspires to host larger, more complex global events and present itself as a credible sporting destination. In that setting, even a single-day international event becomes a test of institutional maturity. Seen through this lens, the Kolkata episode is not an anomaly to be explained away. It is a signal — one that forces an uncomfortable but necessary question about whether India’s current approach to sports event governance is fit for its ambitions.

2. “Small” Events as Policy Stress Tests

Single-day international appearances and celebrity athlete tours are often dismissed as low-stakes events — moments of spectacle rather than substance. From a governance perspective, this is a serious misreading. These events matter precisely because they strip delivery down to its essentials: crowd management, access, visibility, security coordination, and fan experience. There is no tournament buffer, no multi-day adjustment period, and no margin for improvisation. What works is exposed quickly, and what fails does so publicly.

This is especially relevant as India positions itself to host the Commonwealth Games in 2030. Global sporting bodies do not assess hosting capability solely through bid documents or infrastructure plans. They observe patterns of delivery across smaller events — how consistently systems perform under pressure, how expectations are managed, and how institutions respond when things do not go as planned. The contrast within the same tour illustrates this clearly. The evening in Hyderabad demonstrated that large crowds and high expectations can be managed competently with the right planning and execution. The Kolkata event, by contrast, revealed gaps in coordination, crowd experience, and expectation management. The difference was not fan behaviour or star power; it was organisational structure. When outcomes vary so sharply under similar conditions, the issue is no longer operational chance. It is governance design.

Another painful reminder of India’s event governance challenges came earlier in 2025 during the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) IPL victory celebrations. After RCB won their first Indian Premier League title, a celebration event — organised without adequate planning, crowd control, or police clearance — escalated into a deadly crowd crush outside M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, resulting in 11 fatalities and dozens of injuries. Investigations later revealed that key organisers proceeded despite denied permissions and insufficient safety protocols, and tribunals criticised the lack of crowd management foresight — even as multiple stakeholders distanced themselves from responsibility. Like Kolkata’s Messi event — where frustrated, paying fans were unable to see the attraction and rioted — the RCB incident was not merely a “logistical glitch.” It was a governance failure that combined unchecked expectations, poor planning, and blurred accountability. In both cases, the absence of enforceable crowd-safety standards and real event governance frameworks turned what should have been celebratory moments into crises. This underscores that the issue is not the scale of the event but the absence of systems that reliably protect and deliver on the fan experience, regardless of the sport or occasion.

3. Sport as a Commercial Activity, Not a Cultural Exception

Modern sport operates within a commercial ecosystem, regardless of the emotion or cultural pride attached to it. Tickets are sold, sponsorships are activated, broadcast rights are monetised, and brand value is carefully protected. Once money changes hands, sport ceases to be a purely cultural experience and becomes an economic transaction — one that carries expectations on delivery, quality, and accountability.

This distinction matters because sports events in India are often treated as exceptions to basic commercial logic. Fans are expected to adjust, absorb inconvenience, or “understand the situation” in ways that would be unacceptable in other paid experiences. Yet the legal and commercial reality is straightforward: when fans purchase tickets, they are consumers purchasing an experience, not merely access to a venue. The Indian Premier League offers a useful contrast. Regardless of team loyalties or match outcomes, the league has institutionalised fan-experience standards — crowd flow, visibility, entertainment, and security — across venues. The product is consistent even when the sport itself is unpredictable.

The collapse of Formula 1 in India illustrates the opposite risk. Despite strong attendance and global interest, misalignment between commercial commitments, governance structures, and long-term planning rendered the event unsustainable. These examples underscore a simple truth: sport thrives commercially when delivery matches expectation. Treating sporting events as cultural exceptions rather than commercial products is not romantic — it is structurally risky.

4. The Legal Dimension: Fans as Consumers, Organisers as Service Providers

This commercial framing also carries legal consequences. Under Indian law, ticket-holding spectators are not passive enthusiasts. They are consumers of a paid service. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 recognises this relationship and provides remedies where a service suffers from deficiency or involves unfair trade practices. Where an event materially fails to deliver what was marketed — whether due to lack of visibility, restricted access, inadequate crowd management, or premature curtailment — affected spectators may have legal recourse. Importantly, standard “no refund” clauses in ticket terms cannot override statutory consumer protections.

This legal reality reinforces the governance argument. Poor event delivery is not merely a reputational failure or political embarrassment; it creates legal exposure. Organisers, promoters, and in certain cases ticketing platforms may face refund claims, compensation demands, or regulatory scrutiny. In this sense, governance reform is not just about optics or professionalism. It is about aligning India’s sports event ecosystem with the basic legal obligations that accompany commercial transactions at scale.

The RCB crowd crush during victory celebrations in Bengaluru on 4 June 2025 underscores that governance failures in Indian sport can have serious legal consequences, not just reputational ones. Tens of thousands of supporters gathered outside the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium to celebrate RCB’s first Indian Premier League title, but what began as jubilation quickly turned tragic when the crowd became uncontrollable, leading to a deadly crush that killed 11 people and injured many others. The aftermath saw police file an FIR against multiple parties, including the RCB franchise, the event organiser DNA Entertainment Networks and the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA), alleging negligence in planning and crowd management in the run-up to the event. These legal actions were premised on the contention that the event proceeded without proper permissions, adequate crowd risk assessment, and coordinated preparation — a departure from reasonable standards required for public safety. A judicial commission headed by Justice Michael D’Cunha was appointed by the Government of Karnataka to investigate the crush, and its findings held the organising entities responsible for neglecting safety procedures. This institutional response illustrates that when governance gaps intersect with inadequate risk mitigation and crowd control, the consequences are both human and legal — spanning criminal investigations, executive inquiries, and potential civil liability for negligent management. In both the RCB crowd crush and the Messi Kolkata event, the absence of enforceable standards — whether for crowd safety or fan experience — contributed to outcomes that could have been mitigated with stronger governance frameworks. The legal scrutiny that followed the RCB tragedy shows that poor delivery is not merely a policy or operational issue: it can give rise to statutory and judicial review, criminal negligence charges, and binding commissions of inquiry.

Taken together, these cases underline that governance design in Indian sport is not just a matter of competitive credibility — it is a matter of legal responsibility and public safety compliance.

5. Where the Governance System Breaks

The recurring challenges in India’s international sports events are not the result of isolated misjudgments. They reflect deeper structural weaknesses in how events are governed, organised, and evaluated.

First, temporary organising structures. Most international sporting events in India are delivered through event-specific committees that are assembled quickly and dissolve immediately after the event. These bodies operate without continuity, institutional memory, or long-term accountability. Every event effectively starts from zero.

There is little opportunity to retain learning, standardise processes, or build professional expertise over time. In contrast, mature sporting ecosystems rely on permanent or semi-permanent organising structures that evolve across events, refine protocols, and professionalise delivery.

Second, administrative overreach into governance. Civil servants and government agencies play a crucial role in enabling sporting events — from permissions and security to inter-departmental coordination. However, administration and event governance are not interchangeable. Administrative systems are designed for compliance and control, not for fan-experience design, crowd psychology, or commercial delivery. When administrative machinery is asked to fill governance gaps, accountability becomes blurred. Decisions are diffused across departments, responsibility is shared vaguely, and no single entity is answerable for the overall fan experience.

Third, the absence of enforceable fan-experience standards. There are no minimum benchmarks governing visibility, access, crowd flow, communication, or grievance handling for international sporting events in India. Fan experience becomes subjective and discretionary rather than planned and measurable. In mature sports markets, fan-experience requirements are embedded into licensing, venue approval, and event-sanctioning processes. In India, these considerations are often addressed informally, if at all. Taken together, these failures point to a governance system that prioritises event occurrence over event quality. The result is inconsistency — not because of lack of effort, but because of lack of structure.

6. The Employment Paradox in Indian Sport

India does not suffer from a lack of sports management talent. Over the past decade, universities and private institutions have produced a growing pool of professionals trained in event operations, venue management, fan engagement, sponsorship activation, and sports administration.

Yet this capacity remains under-utilised. The contrast with the Indian Premier League is instructive. IPL franchises employ full-time professionals across operations, logistics, fan experience, and commercial delivery. Roles are defined, learning is retained, and systems improve year after year. By comparison, most non-league international events rely on temporary teams, informal networks, and short-term contracts, only to disband once the event concludes. Knowledge is lost, experience is not compounded, and each new event repeats old mistakes.

From a policy perspective, this is a missed opportunity. Formal organising committees and professionalised event structures would not only improve delivery but also generate sustained employment, build institutional expertise, and create a repeatable pipeline for hosting international events. Governance reform, in this sense, is not a cost — it is an investment in capacity.

7. Why Governance Models Cannot Be Copy-Pasted

Calls to simply replicate European or Australian sports governance models in India overlook a critical reality: effective governance is shaped as much by context as by principle. Sporting events operate within local cultural, behavioural, and economic conditions. Crowd behaviour, pricing sensitivity, expectations of access, political involvement, and venue constraints vary significantly across markets. Governance systems that succeed elsewhere cannot be transplanted wholesale without adaptation. The success of professional kabaddi leagues illustrates this point. Rather than imitating Western formats, organisers adapted global broadcast standards, sponsorship frameworks, and fan-engagement principles to Indian viewing habits and cultural preferences.

By contrast, several international sporting initiatives in India have struggled precisely because imported models failed to account for ground realities — from ticketing structures that misread demand to access controls that ignored crowd psychology. The lesson is not to reject global best practices, but to interpret them intelligently. Governance should travel through principles — accountability, continuity, professionalism — while execution must be curated locally.

8. What a Future-Ready Event Governance Framework Could Look Like

If India is serious about scaling its global sports ambitions, reform must move beyond critique and into institutional design. A future-ready governance framework does not require new laws, but clearer structures. International sporting events should be delivered by formally constituted organising committees with defined mandates, professional staffing, and continuity across events. These bodies should evolve over time, retain institutional memory, and refine delivery standards. Roles must be clearly separated. Government authorities should focus on regulation, facilitation, and public safety. Organising committees should be responsible for delivery, fan experience, and commercial execution. When roles blur, accountability disappears. Fan experience must become a governance criterion. Organising bodies should be required to define and deliver minimum standards relating to visibility, access, crowd flow, communication, and grievance handling. What is measured can be managed. Finally, every major event should be followed by structured post-event reviews. The objective is not blame, but learning. Without audits, mistakes are repeated. With them, systems improve.

9. Why This Matters for CWG 2030 and Beyond

India’s ambition to host the Commonwealth Games in 2030 is not unrealistic. What remains uncertain is whether the current event-governance ecosystem can deliver the consistency and credibility global sporting bodies now expect. The United Kingdom’s success with London 2012 was built on permanent organising bodies, clear role separation, and rigorous post-event learning. Qatar’s pathway to hosting the FIFA World Cup relied on years of smaller test events, each treated as an institutional rehearsal. Global sports organisations do not assess readiness based on ambition statements alone. They look for evidence of repeatable delivery. If India continues to treat international events as one-off celebrations rather than governance exercises, inconsistencies will persist, regardless of scale. Global sport does not punish enthusiasm. It punishes uncertainty.

10. Insights from Khel Kamera Kanoon: Context, Commerce, and Delivery

Many of the governance gaps exposed by the Kolkata episode reflect concerns that practitioners in Indian sport have been raising for some time. These concerns echo discussions we’ve been having on Khel Kamera Kanoon, my sports and entertainment law podcast, where practitioners have consistently highlighted similar tensions.

As Tarun sir has pointed out on Khel Kamera Kanoon, one of the most persistent mistakes in Indian sport is the assumption that successful international event models can simply be copied and applied locally. Governance frameworks may travel well, but execution rarely does. Crowd behaviour, pricing sensitivity, expectations of access, political presence, and venue constraints are deeply contextual. Events that fail to adapt to these realities often struggle not because the model is flawed, but because it is misapplied.

Equally important is a second point emphasised by Deep sir — that international sporting events are, at their core, commercial activities with a commercial purpose. Once sport is monetised through ticketing, sponsorships, and broadcast, the fan experience ceases to be optional. It becomes part of the product itself. This distinction matters because it reshapes accountability. When fans are treated as passive spectators, poor delivery can be brushed aside as inconvenience or circumstance. When they are recognised as paying customers, experience becomes a matter of intent, planning, and governance. As Deep sir has noted, delivery is not ancillary to the event — it is central to its commercial logic.

The Kolkata episode illustrates precisely why these insights matter. Demand was not the problem. Interest was not the problem. What failed was the system’s ability to convert that demand into a well-governed, professionally delivered experience. That failure was not inevitable; it was structural. Taken together, these perspectives reinforce a central conclusion: India’s challenge is not enthusiasm or ambition, but the absence of governance structures that respect local context, acknowledge the commercial nature of modern sport, and place fan experience at the heart of event delivery.

11. Conclusion: From Events to Ecosystems

The question raised by episodes like the Messi Kolkata event is not whether India can attract global sporting icons or enthusiastic audiences. It clearly can. The more difficult question is whether India has built the institutional depth required to deliver consistently, regardless of scale or star power. This analysis suggests that the challenge is not one of intent, talent, or demand, but of governance design. When events are organised through temporary structures, driven by personalities rather than systems, outcomes will remain uneven. As India looks toward CWG 2030 and beyond, the shift required is conceptual as much as operational — from celebrating events to governing them. Treating every international sporting occasion as an exercise in institutional learning, rather than a standalone spectacle, is the difference between episodic success and sustained credibility. If India is serious about its global sporting ambitions, the path forward lies not in hosting more events, but in building the systems that make hosting them reliably possible.