New Delhi: MC Mary Kom and Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni has been rated as the 38th most marketable athlete in the world by SportsPro, the world’s leading magazine on the business of sport.
Kom, already a five time world boxing champion, an Arjuna awardee, a Padmashree, a Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna awardee, a brand ambassador for the AIBA and the lone Indian female boxer to have qualified for the London Olympics
The magazine has ranked athletes from the across the world on the basis of their marketing potential over the next three years and have taken into factors like age, home market, charisma, crossover appeal and value for money. Mary is the only Indian athlete other than Dhoni (ranked 16) to have featured in this respected list, reflective of her potential as a brand ambassador after her potential gold in the London Olympics.
The list, headed by Brazilian footballer Neymar, includes some of the world’s best athletes such as Lionel Messi (3), Usain Bolt (4), Christiano Ronaldo (5), Rory McIlroy (2), Maria Sharapova, Novak Djokovic, Lewis Hamilton and many more.
IOS Sports & Entertainment, one of the country’s leading sports management groups holds the exclusive marketing and management rights for Mary and is responsible for coordinating all of her endorsements and public relations. In addition, IOS represents several other Olympic athletes, several of whom are rated very highly to win a medal at this year’s edition and includes Ronjan Sodhi (Shooting), Sandeep Singh (Hockey), Bharat Chetri (Hockey), Sardar Singh (Hockey), Shivendra Singh (Hockey), Yogeshwar Dutt (Wrestling) and Krishna Poonia (Discus Throw). IOS’s various representation agreements make it India’s foremost sports talent management agency with the largest pool of sports stars under exclusive management at one time.
Mary, currently training in Pune, said “I thank SportsPro for considering me among the top 50 marketable athletes in the world, which is such an illustrious list containing the names of so many of the world’s most notable sportspeople. I am going to continue to focus on the Olympic gold and will wait to see if the potential that SportPro has identified can be made to come to fruition after the Olympics”.
Indian Sports News Network
