Media Coverage of Hockey World Cup, 2023 : Sorry State of Affairs

The FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup 2023 will be held in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela, two cities in India’s Odisha state, from January 13 to 29.

Pakistan, the most successful team in the men’s hockey World Cup with four titles, have failed to qualify for the 2023 tournament. India have won the hockey World Cup once, in 1975.

Two venues, the newly-constructed Birsa Munda International Hockey Stadium in Rourkela and the iconic Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar, will host all the matches of the 2023 FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup. The final will be at the Kalinga Stadium on January 29.

The idea of this write up is not to delve into factual matrix concerning the Hockey world cup. But, the dark objective reality of mainstream media’s lack of interest in this Hockey World Cup. The media which all the time boasts of patriotism does not evince interest in the National Sport of India that too hosted by India.

The same media left no stone unturned during FIFA World Cup where India never participated. Ronaldo and Messi rivalry news had more column space than the entire Hockey World Cup.

Former India hockey team captain Viren Rasquinha took to Twitter to expose the sorry state of affairs of our national sport as he urged the top media organisations to give Indian hockey its due - the coverage that it deserves.

“Extremely disappointed with mainstream media & top Indian newspapers on lack of Hockey coverage. Hockey World Cup starts tomorrow. India is hosting it. Been barely any articles even on our own players. We have brilliant hockey journalists. Give them some space please,” Rasquinha tweeted.

Many agreed with the former captain and added that our extreme obsession with Cricket led us to the debacle in every other sport. 

Bhartiya Hockey, few years back, wrote an interesting article listing out all the sporting events (read here) where Indians succeeded but were largely ignored by Media.

There is also an interesting study published (read here) namely “Coverage of Sports in the Mainstream Print Media: Study of Trends with Special Reference to Cricket” on similar topic.

We at The Philox decided to cover major aspects of the World Cup through our YouTube channel (click here). Please subscribe to our channel to support our work.