Indian football's forever mess: ISL crisis risks shattering sport's big dreams
Statutory warning: If you love football, don't read this. It will hurt.
The story so far: The All India Football Federation (AIFF) and the Football Sports Development Ltd (FSDL), a Reliance-owned company that runs the Indian Super League (ISL), are not seeing eye to eye. They remain poles apart in their renegotiation of the master rights agreement (MRA), which grants the marketing rights of India's toptier league to FSDL.
FSDL favours a fundamental rewiring of the agreement, which involves the setting up of a new company—with itself, the clubs and AIFF as shareholders—to run the league. AIFF wants to continue with the current setup where it receives an annual fee of Rs 50 crore from FSDL, with a 5% hike baked in.
Negotiations, which began in February, have stalled. What complicates matters is a separate case being heard by the Supreme Court on a new constitution to govern AIFF. For now, the court has directed AIFF not to sign any deal, including a renegotiated MRA. A verdict was expected on July 18, but it has been delayed with the court waiting to see if the National Sports Governance Bill, 2025, would be adopted in this session of Parliament. If it does, then the law, which will form the basis of regulating India's wild west of sports bodies, will be the foundation of a newly constituted AIFF as well.
The problem? ISL usually runs from September to April, and with time ticking, Indian football is now a game of inglorious uncertainties. Questions abound.
When will the bill pass? When will the SC deliver its verdict? Will a newly constituted AIFF have enough time to negotiate with FSDL on a new MRA? Will they be able to reach an agreement? With most clubs going slow on preparations, citing uncertainty, will players be fit? Will the league start on time? Will all the delays end up with the league being nixed for this season? If the league gets cancelled this year, expect sanctions from the governing body of world football, Fifa, apart from a damaged brand, disappointed fans and an admission that perhaps the strongest attempt yet to breathe life into Indian football has failed.
Back in 2014, during the first ISL, there was a glimmer of hope that this was going to be the big break that India, then the world's second most populous nation, would need to spark interest in the world's most popular sport.
For one, it was backed by Reliance, one of India's biggest names in business. With the organisational heft of IMG, the global sports marketing agency that had played a key role in setting up the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, it was taken for granted that things would be well-drilled.There was also a sprinkling of global stars in the first edition—Alessandro Del Piero, Freddie Ljungberg, Robert Pires, David Trezeguet, Joan Capdevila, Luis Garcia and Nicolas Anelka—to attract eyeballs.There was interest from corporates as well as movie and sports stars to own the franchises, as they saw it as an opportunity to get early on what could be the next IPL.For a while, it worked. It was reported that 429 million viewers watched the inaugural edition live on TV, making it the second most watched sport in India after cricket.But ISL couldn't sustain the momentum. Last year's viewership numbers reportedly dwindled to 130 million which, while outnumbering all other sports save cricket, is not quite the sparkle that was expected from ISL after a decade.A key reason, say club owners, is the quality of football itself. As top global names nearing retirement were phased out, their replacements, as well as Indian players, didn't quite step up as expected.
There could be another reason, too. ISL started as a twomonth tournament and then changed to a longer league format. Joy Bhattacharjya, CEO of Prime Volleyball League, believes that Indian audiences prefer a short, twomonth, IPL-esque format to a sevenor eightmonth-long league format followed by ISL. While the current format is in sync with the global norms in football, it may have diluted a sustained audience engagement in India where folks aren't used to longer leagues. Net-net, after 10 years, no one is really making money from their investments.A club CEO told ET on condition of anonymity that each ISL club is losing Rs 30-35 crore annually for the last 11 years: 'Your average ISL club has easily lost about Rs 330-350 crore. I'm not even counting interest costs.'The league's cumulative losses have been variously pegged between Rs 3,000 crore and Rs 5,000 crore.The numbers weren't sustainable, and one club, FC Pune City, had to shut shop, while Delhi Dynamos moved to Bhubaneswar, lured by a free stadium and increased sponsorship.There are worries for other clubs. As a club executive laments, 'We are in a situation where commercially, the sport is not viable. As the broadcasters cannot see value right now, the return on investment is weak.'What will it take to fix that? A key worry —and a quick fix that clubs suggest—pertain to player salaries. A wage-to-turnover ratio under 60% is considered the best practice globally for football clubs. For ISL, claims a club executive, this figure sometimes crosses 70%. The ISL has a mandatory wage cap of Rs 18 crore, but this is frequently flouted, a club owner says on condition of anonymity.Central to the salary conundrum is the lack of quality players coming in. To get even marginally decent players, clubs end up paying a lot, claims a club executive. Player salaries have gone from ' ?20 lakh back in 2010 in the I-League (the former top tier) to Rs 3 crore now. The quality of players and the quality of football have not improved in proportion,' says another club owner.Shaji Prabhakaran, executive committee member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and former secretary general of AIFF, counters it is market forces at play: 'The pool of talented players is small. At the same time clubs want to win the league by giving the best salaries to the best available players. The clubs are hiking the salaries, nobody has asked them to pay more.'Some clubs want the league to renew its commitment to a wage cap, with far stricter enforcement and oversight on payments made to footballers on the sly as sponsorships.But to really fix Indian football, short-term remedies are not enough. To make ISL a more attractive experience for the fan and a more attractive proposition for the advertiser, the quality of football should go up.'You need a steady flow of young talented footballers to make a league sustainable, and that hasn't happened because not enough money is being invested in football structure and youth football,' complains a club executive Bhattacharjya, who was project director of the Fifa Under-17 World Cup in India in 2017, reckons that the administrative set-up for football in India is broken beyond repair.Multiple club owners and chief executives ET spoke to squarely blame AIFF which, they allege, is not investing enough in grassroots football, resulting in a pyramid, where money concentrates on the top, with little trickling down. Their question: what has the AIFF been doing with the Rs 50 crore going into its coffers as fees for organising the league?In FY2023, AIFF's income touched Rs 137 crore, which came down to Rs 110 crore in FY2024. Even so, AIFF remains the second richest sports body in India.Kalyan Chaubey, president, AIFF, responds: 'Marketing partner FSDL provides fees to AIFF. These funds are utilised by AIFF across various areas, including grassroots and youth development, coach and referee education, development of national teams, and the organisation of national championships across all age groups both for men and women.' He says that last year, 'AIFF successfully conducted 21 championships, featuring a total of 1,697 matches'.Prabhakaran says, 'The budget is 10% of what a country the size of India requires. With the current numbers, you cannot invest in high-quality manpower. You cannot invest in grassroots football, in youth, in infrastructure.'It is a classic chicken-or-egg situation— to improve the financial situation you need to improve viewership, for which you need better football, for which you need better players, for which you need to invest in youth, for which you need money.All said, ISL has been the most successful attempt to put together a national-level football competition—at least from a viewership perspective.Earlier attempts like the National Football League (NFL) and the I-League had failed to improve Indian football. A league should power the performance of the national team. But strangely enough, India's best-ever Fifa ranking of 94 was in 1996, before NFL. The best since—No. 96— was in 2017. Currently the team is at a dismal 133. This is not how things were supposed to be.For now, everyone is waiting, hoping against hope that things will work out with the passing of the sports law—the prospect of a reconstituted AIFF and a new MRA. If it doesn't, then what will be under threat immediately include the livelihood of hundreds of players, support staff and their families, and indeed the likelihood of a revival of Indian football anytime soon.One thing this correspondent, as a football fan, can guarantee is that supporters of Indian football—ignored by all—are angry.
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