Money from broadcast rights is the primary source of income for football leagues worldwide. It is no different for the Indian Super League (ISL), the country’s top-flight competition that has navigated choppy waters in the last two seasons.
Following a truncated single-leg edition last season (2025-26) due to contractual and legal complications, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has handed over commercial rights of the league to the clubs from the 2026-27 season onwards, under a special purpose vehicle framework for the next four seasons.
Clubs have subsequently sought applications for the positions of the league’s CEO, COO and league secretary with the intention of forming a league operating entity, with recruitment posts published on AIFF’s website.
The crisis deepens
The ISL announced on 25 July that it was accepting bids for the league’s media rights for a four-year cycle. After the CEO, COO and league secretary are appointed, more officials are expected to be hired to operate the league once a broadcast partner was in place. But six days after inviting bids, the league suffered a massive setback. Jamshedpur FC withdrew from the competition on 31 July, citing its “inability to generate cash flows for running the club” and stating that the current business model was not viable.
“JFSPL relies on its shareholders almost entirely for funding all of its operating costs, either through equity or through sponsorship. The shareholders have communicated that they are unable to commit significant funding or sponsorship going forward to JFSPL because they believe that the business model of JFC’s participation in ISL, in the form as it stands, is structurally financially unviable for the foreseeable future,” JFSPL CEO Mukul Choudhari wrote to AIFF’s deputy secretary general M. Satyanarayan.
The timing could not have been worse for Indian football. The news of the Tata Group-owned club jettisoning the ISL broke barely 24 hours after the announcement of India hosting five-time world champions Brazil in a friendly in October. It once again highlighted the harsh reality of the game in the country, where revenue generation is a big ask.
The long-running question of finances and ISL’s profitability has led to the exit of the City Football Group from Mumbai City FC, and Reliance Industries subsidiary Football Sports Development Ltd (FSDL) not renewing its commercial partnership with AIFF once a 15-year deal ended in December last year. Apart from JFC’s exit from the ISL, four other league clubs, including reigning champions East Bengal, are currently on the market looking for investors to ease cash-flow woes.
Can the media bid save the ISL?
In such a tricky environment, all eyes are on the media rights deal, for which technical and commercial bids would be opened on 10 August. Clubs are hoping for healthy quotations for a turnaround in their fortunes.
Three entities (Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Fancode and NEP Group Inc.) have bought bid documents and two of them (Fancode and NEP) attended the pre-bid press conference along with Sony Sports Network on 30 July. Clubs hope that this is a good sign, indicating that multiple bids will be received by the deadline of 8 August.
Since the ISL’s inception in 2014 under AIFF’s erstwhile commercial partnership with FSDL, Star Sports Network reportedly paid around ₹250 crore per year for media rights for the first 10 years, before Viacom 18 took over with a reported ₹275 crore per year agreement.
Valuation of ISL’s broadcast rights plummeted to ₹8.62 crore for the truncated 2025-26 edition—consisting of 91 single-leg matches involving 14 participating teams—once FSDL ended its association with AIFF. OTT streaming platform Fancode bagged the broadcast rights, leaving clubs with a big drop in revenue. Subsequently, clubs were forced to implement cost-cutting measures to reduce losses.
During the FSDL era, each club paid ₹15 crore on average to FSDL as franchise fee and were accustomed to receiving a similar amount in return from the central revenue pool—a major chunk of which came from the broadcast deal arrangement. But that pool dried up when AIFF’s association with FSDL ended.
Viewership pattern also changed with Fancode’s digital-oriented approach receiving an online audience of 5.79 million, accompanied by 9.39 million viewers on linear TV in 2025-26, as per an AIFF document. According to a report by YouGov Sport on ISL media metrics, the cumulative reach on linear TV in the 2024-25 season was 152.9 million.
In fact, with 17.56 million live television viewers, the second division Indian Football League (IFL) attracted approximately 8.17 million more than ISL in a similarly truncated 2025-26 edition, as per an AIFF document shared with IFL clubs. This makes the current broadcast tender all the more pivotal for ISL’s commercial health.
“It is a club-led model so they have to comment as the clubs will take the final call as far as broadcast partners and marketing partners are concerned,” AIFF’s deputy secretary general M. Satyanarayan told Lounge.
A silver lining?
Comments were sought from multiple ISL club officials, though none agreed to go on record, citing the sensitive nature of the subject, opting to wait and watch how the tender process shapes up.
“The bid valuation depends on the number of overall matches. For instance, if it is a 14-team home-and-away league then the match count is 182, but if 13 teams participate the count reduces to 156,” pointed out the owner of a live production house that closely works with Indian football. He did not want to be named.
The AIFF is yet to decide if a replacement club will be brought in to fill the vacant spot of JFC, or go ahead with a 13-team competition.
“Any valuation in upwards of ₹35 crore would be considered decent but if it hovers around the ₹20 crore mark or below then there could be creases on the forehead of many people,” said a person who is aware of the developments. He hopes that a deal in the range of ₹25-30 crore can be achieved.
All in all, the bid amount for the media rights tender will be a crucial indicator of ISL’s market pull.
Sayan Mukherjee is a sports journalist with an affinity towards football.