Moore’s Law.

An ambitious claim once made by a businessman about an industry without any research or backing whatsoever. A claim that ruled that industry for around a quarter century, driving innovation, creation and miniaturisation on a scale never seen before.

All good things must come to an end, though, and as with the microprocessor companies’ woes, the fate of our venerable sports fest is also headed towards the same direction.

Or is it?

BOSM has evolved from being merely a gathering of local colleges to a full-blown national event in its own right, hosting a population of nearly thirteen hundred participants. With a new music event in 2015 and a comedy show starting from last year, there can be no doubt that the popularity and reach of the event amongst even non-sports aficionados is at, or rather nearing, its peak.

A peak once attained will eventually saturate, and the ambitious predictions from a few years ago have now been met. With a renovated GymG and the rest of Project Parivartan going at full steam, the organising body will have to consider stalling the fest’s growth for a while at the very least, if not more.

The hostel renovations are posing a constraint as well, not allowing any more than the current number of participants to be housed inside the campus. The number of courts are also going to bottleneck the entire scheduling if more teams start to register and arrive. The fact that the Institute makes classes go on despite the fest is also another hindrance that does not allow clubs and departments from utilising their manpower.

A sudden decision of the Institute to hamstring the fest by halving the sports budget does not seem to bode well for the future of sports in BITS. There does come a serious ceiling to the amount of money the Department of Sponsorship and Marketing can bring in, despite their very best efforts.

The fest’s books have always been in the black so far, but if further ‘free’ prof shows and other pieces of entertainment are going to be procured for the increasingly insatiable BITSian audience, one may end up with the unfortunate situation of having a fest that is too large to be self-sustainable. The one significant advantage in BOSM’s favour, the fact that the organisers aren’t being forced to pay more than the average BITSian, may become a thing of the past if such unbridled expansion continues.

A simple solution does exist, though. Realistically, keeping BOSM as big as it is now for the near future is a win-win, both in terms of profitability and from an entertain-the-junta perspective. A plan of action can be taken if an increase in the size of the fest is a pressing concern. By allowing Project Parivartan to run its natural course, the increased housing capacity and better facilities will better the fest on their own.

By 2020, instead of predicting large, unwieldy crowds, a disproportionate number of entertainment events and an overall ‘Oasis-ization’ of the sports fest like APOGEE has undergone in the near past, the organising body should be aiming at making BOSM as authentic an experience as possible – a veritable Mecca for the sportsman or the casual fan. By not making all three fests vaguely different versions of each other, a more interested and niche crowd can be drawn to all of them. If the sacrifice is the scale of the fest, then so be it.

Such estimates must not be taken as pessimism or an indictment of the organising body in any way. A realistic measure of BOSM’s eventual saturation in terms of size and relevance has to be made, and preparing oneself for this eventuality will help plan a more sustainable growth for the fest.