A top IMG-Reliance (IMG-R) official has said they are incurring huge losses by investing in Indian football, thus implying that it will be difficult for them to share the revenues with the clubs as of now.
Representatives of 12 I-League clubs met the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and IMG-R officials in New Delhi on Tuesday, demanding a share of the revenues earned and that they should have a majority stake in the domestic championship. The clubs complained of not generating any revenue despite investing around Rs150 crore each year. “I don’t think they are wrong in their demands. They are investing a lot of money in Indian football and it was good that they spoke their hearts out,” IMG’s senior vice-president (global business development — football) Jefferson Slack told DNA on Wednesday. “However, one needs to understand that we too are a long way away from making profits.”
Slack, who was in the city on Wednesday, explained the three main sources of generating revenues for a club are through gate receipts, the commercial activities taken up by the clubs and a third of it comes from television revenues. “The clubs need to be proactive in order to generate revenues. But we have met and discussed plenty of things. We will get back to the clubs with the timelines regarding concepts to revamp the structure and profile of the I-League based on which there will be further interactions,” Slack said.
Slack was of the opinion that Indian football is still far off from being a marketable product. “You can sit at home and watch Manchester United play Real Madrid...we’ve got to compete with that. And that’s the hard reality everywhere around the world. To make the league appealing, we need to improve the playing standard and generate a buzz so that it gets a broadcaster interested. But it all comes down to whether the people are interested. Right now in Indian football, people are not. But things will get better,” he said.
A new format for the I-League is proposed for the next season, which is based on USA’s Major League Soccer. However, Slack didn’t wish to divulge into the details. “We know all kind of different football models all over the world. We will see what the best (option for India) is, discuss it with the AIFF and the clubs and see how it can be taken forward from there,” Slack added.
Slack said tapping the Indian market is the biggest commitment IMG has ever made in football. “We hope we are not being naive. But the under-16 kids training at our academy in America, who are a supremely talented lot, make us very optimistic,” he said.
Comments