The Indian Super League: Destined for Economic Success, or Doomed to Fail? Posted on October , 2014 by India Next weekend, India will launch the inaugural season of its Indian Super League (ISL). Three years in the making, the ISL will become the country’s second professional football league after the much-maligned I-League, but has high hopes of succeeding in several key areas where the I-League has largely failed. Principle amongst the ISL’s ambitions is to loosen the stranglehold that cricket currently has over India’s sports industry and, importantly, become a prosperous business model, a financial success, and a potential major incentive for foreign investment in India. In other countries, the football industry has certainly shown that it has the scope to achieve these goals. In England, for example, the revenues of the football industry now far outweigh those of cricket. In 2012/13, England’s Premier League had a total revenue of €2,946 million compared to the approximate overall €140 million turnover of the cricket industry. The financial opportunities of football in England are underscored by some of its football clubs, such as Swansea City; a club that generated £58 million for the Welsh economy following its first season in the Premier League. The majority of England’s first-tier football clubs are owned by foreign investors, exemplifying the appeal that the industry now has as a business. The question posed to the ISL is whether it can emulate the success of a competition like the Premier League. With a population of over 1.2 billion people, India arguably has the world’s most under-penetrated football market, and further possesses a number of other qualities that suggest the ISL could indeed be a success. Its demographic dividend, increasingly affluent middle-class and growing appetite for TV broadcasts of foreign football games all point towards the viability of the ISL as a business model. - See more at: india-briefing/news/indian-super-league-destined-economic-success-doomed-fail-9083.html/#sthash.fyTZThfs.dpuf
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 02:46:16 +0000
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