Indian Super League - 2013

Introduction

The Indian Super League is a popular sporting event where teams from across the country participate in a football tournament.

The Indian Super League was started on 12th October 2014 and gained massive popularity among the country's youth.

Team ATK FC won the inaugural edition of the Indian Super League, with Chennaiyin FC winning the second edition of the tournament..

Reliance, Star India, and All India Football Federation are the co-promoters of the event. Several important personalities and celebrities have sponsored and promoted the league's teams on different platforms.

Currently, there are 11 franchises of the team, and they are based out of Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jamshedpur, Kochi, Kolkata, and Mumbai.

Apart from organising the Indian Super League, the company also invests in managing and refurbishing stadiums across the country. They also have several programs to train and give a platform to the footballers in the country. 

The primary objective of the Indian Sports League is to motivate more people to play the sport and rise internationally. Currently, India needs a stronger representation in terms of football, and the league wants to improve its image.

Table of Contents

• Details
• History
• Theme
• Objectives
• Winners
• Home Stadiums
• Conclusion

Details

Let’s have a look at some important highlights of the Indian Super League.

The event was started nine years ago by AIFF and FSDL. Currently, 11 teams are a part of the Indian Super League. The event is broadcasted on Star Sports, Disney + Hotstar, Jio TV and JioCinema.

History

Play

Football has been an important part of India’s history since the 19th century. The Durand Cup came into the picture in 1888, followed by the National Football League in 1996.

Before the National Football League, no tournament was organised at a national level. To professionalise the sport, the All-India Football Association, which oversees football in India, reorganised the league in 2006 and renamed it the I-League.

Unfortunately, the league struggled to gain popularity in the following seasons because of subpar promotions.

The AIFF got into a 10-year agreement with Zee Sports in 2016, where Zee Sports agreed to broadcast the National Football League and all the other tournaments that the AIFF organised.

However, the deal was dissolved due to differences between the two parties. The AIFF, Reliance Industries, and the International Management Group signed a new 15-year, 700 crore agreement, revealed on December 9th, 2010.

On 21st October 2013, the Indian Super League was launched by IMG-Reliance, Star Sports, and the All-India Football Federation. However, due to some set-up reasons, the tournament was postponed.

The bidding started on 3rd March 2014, and several cities and states were selected to participate in the event.

Several prominent personalities and celebrities like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Ranbir Kapoor, etc., won the bid for different cities.

Eight teams were a part of the tournament earlier: Atlético de Kolkata, Bangalore Titans, Delhi Dynamos, Goa, Kerala Blasters, Mumbai City, Northeast United and Pune City.

However, Bangalore Titans dropped out of the league, and the franchise was given to Chennai.

The inaugural season was played at the Salt Lake Stadium on 12 October 2014, where Kolkata defeated the Mumbai team by three goals. Fikru Teferra was the first to score a goal in the Indian Super League.

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) oversees football in Asia, and FIFA, the global regulatory body, did not officially recognise the Indian Super League for its first three seasons of operation.

Jérôme Valcke, then the general secretary of FIFA, said that the Indian Super League was only recognised as a competition and not a league in October 2014.

The I-League is still considered to be India's official football league. The teams could not compete in Asian club competitions, the AFC Champions League, or the AFC Cup without AFC recognition.

The first three seasons of the Indian Super League gained a lot of popularity, and the television ratings of the event also went up drastically.

Atlético de Kolkata won the league twice in the first four years, and it was one of the top 4 teams in the remaining two leagues.

The Indian Super League shaped the football industry; hence, the organisers wanted to prioritise Indian Super League over I-League.

In 2017, IMG-Reliance, the AIFF and the I-League representatives decided to meet the AFC in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the merger of both events. The AIFF proposed that both events should run simultaneously.

However, key representatives from the AIFF, the FSDL, the ISL and the I-League clubs, as well as other significant stakeholders, attended a summit organised by the AFC on October 14 in Kuala Lumpur.

It was presided over by AFC Secretary General Windsor John and discussed a new roadmap for facilitating the football league system in India.

According to the roadmap developed at the summit by the AFC and the AIFF and approved by the AFC Executive Committee on October 26 in Da Nang, the Indian Super League will become the nation's top-tier league in 2019–20 and run concurrently with the I-League.

This will allow the Indian Super League champions to compete in the AFC Champions League and the I-League champions to compete in the AFC Cup.

Theme

The mission of the Indian Super League is to provide entertaining and high-quality football to the viewers so that they engage well with the sport, and the level of the game in India also goes up compared with other countries.

The Indian Super League also aims to deliver value to all the stakeholders and partners involved in organising the game and helping it reach the audience.

Objectives

The Indian Super League was started with different objectives in mind. Some of these objectives are stated below to help you understand the reason behind the tournament's inception.

• To host a domestic football competition of international caliber
• To enlist the support of hundreds of millions of devoted and patriotic Indian football fans
• To promote and make it easier for everyone to start playing the sport
• To create a sizable pool of talented Indian athletes and "heroes" for the Indian national team
• To establish new benchmarks for India's marketing, governance, and sports administration
• To build demand for additional investment by providing value to all our partners and stakeholders

The Indian Super League has tried its best to live up to all the objectives and is now popularising the game even internationally.

Winners

Several teams have competed against each other in the Indian Super League, and some have emerged victorious. The teams are a part of both the regular season and the playoffs.

Let’s have a look at the winning teams of the Indian Super League over the years.

Since the 2019–20 season, teams that finish first in the regular season standings—referred to as Premiers—are given the League Winners' Shield and a straight entry into the AFC Champions League group Stage.

Home Stadiums

Different stadiums across the country are designated to host the football matches of the Indian Super League.

All the current clubs have their home stadium, and they have a different capacity. Let’s have a look at the different home stadiums of different clubs in India.

Conclusion

The Indian Super League is one of the most important sport tournaments in the country.

The primary aim of the Indian Super League is to make Indian football a prominent sport and give it some international acclaim.