Meghalaya State League started on Friday in collaboration with the state government where 21 district champions and three teams from Shilong Premier Football League and another team Jayantia Hills are included in the MSL. The 25 teams are divided into four groups and they play each other, following the UEFA Champions League format on the home-and-away basis before reaching the finals through the knock-out system.

MSL was conceptualized three years ago to spread football across the state and now it is being organized with an exceptional approach.

All the participating 25 teams in the MSL are offered attractive financial assistance, following the format of IPL. 

The participating teams are given a share of the revenues such as the home teams getting a share of ticket sales while organizing home matches. Apart from Rs 1 lakh grant to the participating teams in their group stage matches and Rs 1 lakh more in the semifinal stage, MSL teams are also offered a share of the total sponsorship amount raised for the League. Due to a shortage of time, the MSL failed to gather private sponsorship to a big extent, but from the next year, the participating 25 teams will have shares of the sponsorship pool following the IPL style. 

Larsing Ming Sawyan, the president of the Meghalaya Football Association (MFA) revealed while speaking to Parallel Sports on Friday, “The MSL was conceptualized mainly with the aim of encouraging those districts to conduct district football league who were struggling to make it happen due to financial crises. The state government came up to promote the game in the state, creating a huge fund (nearly Rs 90 lakh) and decided to donate Rs 1 lakh to each district to organize district leagues. Although it started three years ago, it was obstructed due to Covid-19 followed by the pandemic. We have revived it this year, hoping to organize more professionally from next year.”

Significantly, all the league matches will be televised on MSL YouTube channels. One match will be shown live and others will be televised delayed. 

Larsing however divulged that the MFA is planning to introduce the MSL at the grass-route level in collaboration with the state government in the near future. He said, "Meghalaya Football Association pioneered in launching grass route program by introducing ‘Baby League’ in 2017. The project was initiated through a try-party involvement where along with us state government and Tata Trust were there and it is running perfectly. Now our plans are to start the MSL in the ‘Baby League’ and with the youth level also.” 

The MSL that started on Friday will be staged in four venues across the state. Rangdajied United and Niaw Niasa took part in the opening match.