The All India Football Federation (AIFF) released a statement on Friday, November 7, confirming that they didn’t receive any bids to the Request of Proposal (RFP) for the commercial rights of the Indian Super League (ISL)
. It has put Indian football in deep trouble, especially since their current deal for ISL commercial rights with Reliance-subsidiary Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL) ends on December 8.Notably, the massive development happened just three weeks after AIFF had floated the RFP on October 16, inviting bids to monetise the commercial rights of the ISL in a 15-year deal. It is important to note that the deadline to submit a bid for ISL commercial rights was November 5 with the plan to open them up on November 11, but it won’t
be the case.
The official statement from AIFF on the matter, shared in a post on X, read, “The deadline for submission of bids in response to the Request of Proposal (RFP) for awarding the right to monetise the commercial rights of the Indian Super League (ISL) concluded today. No bids were received within the stipulated timeframe. The AIFF bid evaluation committee will convene over the weekend to review the situation and deliberate on the future course of action.”
AIFF wanted minimum guaranteed pay of INR 37.5 crore for ISL commercial rights annually
As per the AIFF, the companies with a minimum net worth of INR 250 crore were eligible to bid while guaranteeing a minimum of INR 37.5 crore payable or 5% of gross revenue, whichever is higher to them for the ISL commercial rights every year. The deal would have also included various other financial commitments like “production, marketing, prize money, VAR implementation, and grassroots development”, as per the report published in Times of India.
This pertinent snag has put the start of the ISL 2025-26 back by a few months already with the initial plans were to kick it off in September of this year.
