AIFF & IMG-Reliance to sign contract

Today hopefully will be an important day in the history of Indian football, but only time will tell if that would be the case. The All India Football Federation are set to sign a 15 year deal worth more then Rs. 7 Billion (700 crores) for the marketing, sponsorship and television rights of the federation. The deal is set to be signed later today ahead of the Annual General Meeting of the AIFF at Football House in Dwarka, New Delhi and it will be the biggest ever such deal in Indian sports outside of money rich Cricket.

The signature ends month's of uncertainty with the deal having been on the cards for over four month's. Then a rival bid from another sports management agency in CAA came in, but IMG-Reliance were in the end given the contract. It also will end the AIFF's financial problems which the federation faced over the last few month's.

The first step is that the old partner in the Zee Group is paid off with a one time payment of Rs. 70 crores. Then the AIFF will receive around Rs. 25 crores per annum for the next five years. And then from 2015 onwards IMG-Reliance guarantees the AIFF from the next 10 years at least Rs. 50 crores or 25 % of the net revenue whichever happens to be more.

The most pressing issue of what happens to the TV rights will only be discussed once the deal is signed. The AIFF only a couple of weeks ago organised an own bidding for the I-League 2010/11 rights with only Bengali channels showing interest to broadcast the matches. But in the interest of Indian football and the costly rights IMG-Reliance will have bought it will have to find a suitable sports broadcaster to show the I-League and Team India matches.

But in the past we have had such deals which we hoped would take Indian football forward, but in the long term they simply couldn't deliver due to different reasons, be it IMG's deal with the AIFF in 1996 or the AIFF deal with the Zee Group in 2005. So hopefully this time around all parties will have learned their lessons that only Indian football counts and its development. Also the right people need to be brought in with the necessary knowledge and understanding, only then everyone is a winner and not all losers as has been the case in the past...