Sling bags drawn across their backs, clad in boots and sport gear, walking groups of peers with jerseys on, the futsal goers of the valley are many and far-reaching. The craze of futsal that swept across the nation gave the futsal business a massive boost pre-COVID with a new futsal seemingly popping up everyday and somehow always booked to full capacity. From the outside looking in, the futsal business looked full of promise and was a great medium of entertainment, fitness for the youth and enthusiasts of our nation.
However, since the onset of COVID and government enforced lockdowns, the state of the business is one that paints a rather depressing picture. “Business has obviously gone down, pre-COVID we had full bookings, every slot had a match going on, but now it's barely even 20 per cent after the first two lockdowns. As a modern business, we’ve had to adapt to COVID, the players who come are obviously one who don’t have the virus, since their bodies won't let them, still we ask them for their vaccine cards and request them to sanitize thoroughly regardless.” informs Sambandh Kumar Basyal Owner of Dhuku Futsal. “Hopefully business picks up in the next month and we can return back to the sales we did pre-COVID.”
Contrary to the belief of booming businesses pre-COVID, the futsal market supposedly was plummeting towards rapid saturation with the amount of similar ventures opening up. “The business is truly struggling, I don't know about the other futsals, but for mine it's rather disturbing, The initial COVID obviously had the business to zero, even after that despite recent reopening and subsequent lockdowns the business hasn’t recovered, sales are dwindling and we aren't even at 10 per cent of what we used to do pre-COVID.
There was an exponential decline before COVID even struck and after COVID it has been disastrous.” says Sanam Singh, owner of Hardik Futsal.
“We used to have 3 futsals but we’ve had to close down two and have one barely running. Even this one will soon shut down. We can't run a sustainable business with 2-3 matches every day. The rent is due for over a year, the landlords were understanding in the initial lockdown, however now it's a bit less lenient, rent is due, so are the electricity bills, the cost of running isn’t justifiable. We’re bleeding money and even if business slowly picks up after this new wave its too little of change too late. A concoction of bad strategies on the government when it comes to business such as ours and the declining futsal business itself has resulted in this rather depressing outcome,” he adds.
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