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Indian Super League (ISL), promoted by IMG-Reliance and STAR India, is set to provide the much needed relief to India's oldest football clubs such as East Bengal and Mohun Bagan among others. Though various stakeholders of the game are seeking more clarity into ISL, it is learnt that these football clubs are set to get financial support via the IPL styled football league as these clubs would get a "substantial" part of revenue offered for football players playing in ISL.
At present, the range of football players' contract vary from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore a year. While upcoming domestic players are at the mid and lower level of the pyramid, established domestic player s and foreign names are at the top of pyramid.
According to sources each player would get a premium over his stipulated salary of two--three months(duration of ISL tournament) from the franchises.
"Now a A part of this premium would be shared between the clubs and the player. This would be done via a mutual agreement between the players and the club," said key official at the East Bengal club.
For example, if a player has a contract with the football club of salary of X amount, then the franchise would pay a premium of Y over the salary of X. Now, a ratio would be worked out to share the premium between the player and clubs who would allow the players to play for franchises during the ISL, slated to kick off in September. Odafe Onyeka Okolie, reportedly, is one of the highest paid player in the Indian football clubs scenario.
This would provide some comfort to the football clubs as many of them have been struggling to manage their finances after the Saradha chit fund scam went bust last year. In fact, after the chit fund scam, for the first time in the past 10 years, budget allocations for renewing contracts of leading football clubs had to be reduced. Significantly, both foreign and domestic football players had to take significant cut in their budget.
Saradha group was one of the lead sponsors of Mohun Bagan while other similar money raising companies have forced to stay away from sponsoring these clubs owing to liquidity crisis.
Another senior official at Mohun Bagan Club said, "This would provide some relief to the clubs' finances but what would be crucial of the league's success is what range of global players would actually come and play during the ISL,".
After the winning bids were announced for ISL, football has come back into the limelight in India. Among winning bidders for the eight Indian Super League(ISL) football teams, announced on Saturday, were actors, Ranbir Kapoor, John Abraham and Salman Khan, former Indian cricket team captains Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, and industrialists Harshavardhan Neotia, Sanjiv Goenka and Venugopal Dhoot.
All the stakeholders of the game are eagerly hoping that the game might get its due riding on ISL. It remains to be seen if that would be realised or remain a wish.
