Sachin, Sourav, B’wood stars bag football teams at ISL auction

While Tendulkar bagged the Kochi franchise with PVP Ventures, which also own a team in Indian Badminton League, his contemporary Sourav Ganguly won the Kolkata franchise by forming a consortium with a Spanish league giant Atletico Madrid and businessmen Harsavardhan Neotia, Sanjeev Goenka and Utsav Parekh.

The Mumbai franchise went to bollywood superstar Ranbir Kapoor and famous chartered accountant Bimal Parekh while another tinsel town biggie Salman Khan bagged the Pune franchise together with Kapil Wadhawan and Dheeraj Wadhawan of the Wadhawan Group. Actor John Abraham teamed up with I-League side from the northeast, Shillong Lajong to bag the Guwahati-based franchise.

The remaining three teams went to Sameer Manchanda-led Den Network for Delhi, Sun Group, the owners of IPL team Hyderabad Sunrisers for Bengaluru and the consortium of Venugopal Dhoot of Videocon, Dattaraj Salgaocar and Shrinivas V Dempo for Goa. The league will be organised by IMG-Reliance in association with Star India with support from All India Football Federation (AIFF). It is set to see big names as icon players such as former France international Robert Pires and ex-Sweden and Arsenal player Fredrik Ljungberg.

‘ISL’s proposal for league partners received an overwhelming response from the business, sports and bollywood community. The league aims to ignite a revolution in the sport and ultimately enable Indian football to thrive and perform at the highest level on the international stage’, the organisers said. The organisers also said the ISL will take football to other non-traditional centres, which will only help in raising the profile of the game in the country. ‘Four of the final eight cities, Delhi, Kochi, Guwahati and Bangalore, will find itself in the mainstream football map of the country, which is traditionally being dominated by Kolkata, Goa, Pune and Mumbai,’ they added. Meanwhile, football-crazy northeast India will get a taste of high-profile football event with actor John Abraham tying up with Shillong Lajong, the region’s first I-League side.