The All India Football Federation (AIFF) finds itself in a soup after failing to receive any bid for its top-flight Indian Super League.
Till the deadline of 5pm IST on Friday, there was no bid on the table, leading to further uncertainty in Indian football.
For a league that was once positioned as the face of Indian football’s growth, the absence of even one proposal signals deeper trouble than the AIFF may have anticipated.
The AIFF, which issued an official request for proposal on 16th October, had plans to find a new partner for the next 15 years to run the ISL’s broadcast, sponsorship, digital, and merchandising rights. The AIFF tried to build confidence around the process — KPMG as advisors, Justice L. Nageswara Rao keeping an eye on fairness, and a clean slate for bidders to step into.
However, four entities attended a pre-bid meeting on October 15 to seek clarity on various terms and conditions, including an asking price of a minimum of Rs 37.5 crore.
Bids were sought after the AIFF replied to 234 queries on 29th October, extending the initial deadline by two days from 5th November at the request of two parties according to News 9 Sports.
The AIFF’s existing partnership with Reliance-subsidiary Football Sports Development Ltd. ends in December, and bids were sought after an agreement in which it lifted a ‘right to match’ clause that existed in the earlier deal signed in December 2010 that guaranteed them rights to all competitions in exchange for an annual average sum of Rs 50 crores. An AIFF official revealed to News 9 Sports on condition of anonymity that no bid has been placed. Even FSDL didn’t place a bid.
Hours before the bid-submitting deadline, former Andhra Pradesh Football Association president Gopalakrishna Kosaraju filed an application in the Supreme Court seeking exclusion of Chaubey from the bid evaluation committee and appointment of an independent member in the interest of “fairness, transparency, & institutional integrity”. “This is a clear failure of President Chaubey, and a no-confidence motion should be brought against him now,” he said.
