Abstract
This talk will draw from some ideas in my forthcoming book on technology and the IPL (Indian Premier League). The book is about how technologies such as the television, the internet and other ICTs (information and communication technologies) took a unique, slow sport and transformed it into the quick and flamboyant IPL.
In the talk, I will try to explore how (if at all) the idea of the city has been mobilised (with the help of these technologies) in the building of the spectator of the IPL; and how far it succeeds. I will try to talk about how sport and city identities can come together, and how sub-national leagues in sports such as football, baseball, etc build fan bases by marshalling this identity. I invite you to join me in analysing who the fan, the spectator, the audience of a sport such as the IPL is; and in trying to understand how the entire edifice of modern sport is built around this spectator. I want to ask if the IPL, built as it is on the ideas of many other sporting leagues that have team and fan identities that coalesce around cities, manages to build that kind of identity, and why.