CHENNAI: Bidders looking to own and manage the commercial rights of the All India Football Federation's (AIFF) men's tournaments will present their bids to Indian Super League (ISL) clubs in midweek, the Executive Committee of the AIFF agreed on Sunday.
This comes a day after the ISL clubs wrote to the AIFF seeking for more time to evaluate the bids. Two companies — UK-based Genius sports and Dream Sports-owned FanCode — placed their bids recently to manage and promote the Indian Super League and the Federation Cup. Genius sports' bid has an annual spending amount of around ₹63 crores with a five per cent increase each year for twenty years. FanCode, who are broadcasting the ongoing 2025/26 ISL season, have their annual spending at ₹36 crore over a 20-year cycle. The bid, which covers media rights, sponsorships data and other commercial assets, were discussed in detail in committee's meeting.
"The clubs will look at the structure of their bids and how they will commercially produce the league. They would want to know how viable their bids are. This decision (on the commercial partner) will be taken together," AIFF's deputy secretary general, M Satyanarayan, told this daily.
In addition to clubs meeting the bidders, the bids will be evaluated by one of the big four consultant companies. "To bring accountability and a little more clarity (on the bids), we will give it to KPMG. We will see if they can also go through the bids and make a comparative study," he added. After this, the bidders and the AIFF may negotiate, based on feedback given by the clubs. This process, Satyanarayan said, may take almost a month.
The AIFF had released the Request for Proposal (RFP) terms earlier this month in two packages — Package A which has the men's tournaments (ISL and Fed Cup) and Package B which has the Indian Women's League (IWL). It is learnt that Capri Sports were the sole bidders for the league for an amount of around ₹150-160 crores.
Earlier this year, FanCode won the rights to stream and broadcast the truncated 25/26 season, as their bid of ₹8.6 crore was the strongest amongst the seven bidders. KPS Studios, meanwhile, won the bid to produce the world feed.
Adoption of new Act
The committee also discussed the implementation of the proposed National Sports Governance Act. They noted that the state and district football associations will have to adopt the new framework. Therefore, the bodies will be given 90 days to understand the legal and operational implications and assess the feasibility of aligning their statutes with the new governance requirements.