Expectations high from Indian Super League

Lalit Modi, the man who conceived the Indian Premier League (IPL), modelled it after football leagues in Europe, the NFL and the NBA. Now, the brand new Indian Super League (ISL) is taking a leaf from the highly-successful Twenty20 cricket tournament.

The one big difference the ISL has with IPL is the higher proportion of celebrity owners. The action heroes of Bollywood have realised that it’s a win-win situation for both sport as well as them. Big names of Indian cricket have added a dash of their own glamour to it.

As in the IPL, the new football league with eight city franchises has tried to give a global look with coaches from overseas, though, the star players roped in may not be on the field for the full 90 minutes of the game owing to their advanced age.

Is ISL the best way the All India Football Federation (AIFF) thought of waking up "sleeping giants" India - so famously coined by FIFA chief Sepp Blatter as he tried to flatter India on his first visit to the country seven years ago.

When Blatter returned to India two years ago he knew the "sleeping giants" would confront him. He was ready with his wit: "You need more than one alarm clock to wake up the giant and it has started to wake up!"

To believe that Indian economy has suddenly opened up and Indian football will be flush with Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is as ridiculous as Blatter’s optimism. After the IPL, hockey and badminton have successfully organised professional leagues and now kabaddi has shown there is marketing space for more than one pro league.

The Basketball Federation of India (BFI) is following suit. It has has gone along to tie-up between Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group and IMG to start a pro league with the corporate group getting all commercial rights to broadcasting, sponsorship, merchandising of the sport in the country.

If all the promises made by the business conglomerates fructify, Indian sport will be the place to invest. Late last year at Punjab Investors Summit, Mukesh Ambani came up with the amazing offer to develop hockey, football and basketball, creating world class infrastructure for these disciplines in the state.

The biggest offshoot of these leagues is that sports other than cricket are being discussed seriously at cocktail circuits. Television can do wonders to sport and to Trade Rating Points (TRP) of the broadcasting channels. 

Broadcaster Star Network has come up with a remarkable idea of promoting the ISL as a part owner of the property. But there is no TV rights money to distribute among franchises who can, however, find their own team sponsors.

Back to ISL, the key is why there was no auction of players like in the IPL? The logic is, in auction there is a danger of one or two moneybags cornering the cream just as it had happened in the case of a couple of teams in the IPL. But over the years the IPL owners have become smart and most teams have quality players.

How will the ISL help Indian football?

Little-known footballers will get to rub shoulders with experienced international players and someone like India international goalkeeper Subrata Pal can get noticed under the bar for him to play in bigger and better leagues overseas.

World Cup winning Italians Alessandro Del Piero and Marco Materazzi and Spaniards Joan Capdevila and Luis Garcia and Frenchmen David Trezeguet and Robert Pires will be a novelty for the Indian fans, who are tired seeing Africans or an odd Latin American in the I-League. 

Yet, for all one knows these "has-beens" may not be on field for the entire duration of the game.

At the end of it all, the Indian players will take home around Rs. 40 lakh for their work in two months. That’s some sum for any Indian footballer when the country’s team is languishing at 158th spot in the FIFA rankings. 

The total prize money is Rs. 15 crore - eight crore for the winners, four crores for the runners-up while the two losing semi-finalists will receive 1.5 crore each.

If Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virat Kohli and a host Bollywood heroes cannot sell football to the countrymen who else can? If they fail, we will be back to watching the most unimpressive national league, televised by a mere three cameras as against the ISL’s 18. All the same the expectations are high.

The AIFF could still have used the league to revive traditional football centres like Hyderabad and Bangalore and even Jalandhar or Ludhiana. The eight franchises - Kerala Blasters FC, North-East United FC, Chennaiyin FC, Atletico de Kolkata, Delhi Dynamos, FC Goa, Fc Pune City, Mumbai City FC - have a great opportunity of making a mark.

Like in the IPL, there should have been 'catchment' areas attached to each franchise so that the matches are played in those cities. For instance, Kerala could have played a couple of matches in Bangalore and Chennaiyin in Hyderabad.

It will take quite some time for the clubs to gain recognition as brands of the cities they are associated with. The celebrities can do what Shahrukh Khan did for his IPL team, Kolkata Knight Riders by roping in the person who matters in Kolkata, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Kolkata might find it difficult to adopt Atletico unless they are won over by Sourav Ganguly because most of their city players from Mohun Bagan and East Bengal have all been signed up by other franchises. 

In this respect Goa and North-East are better placed. The Goan team is virtually the entire I-League club Dempo SC while North-East FC comprises mostly of Shillong Lajong players.

The two teams will have the advantage of having played together for long in the I-League whereas the others will have to strive to jell.

Who says there is no money in or for Indian sport, these pro leagues have proved that there is plenty provided the sports administrators are receptive to ideas and are keen on marketing their disciplines.

Strangely, markets, not the federations, are keen on selling sport.