The Star India broadcast subsidiary of media company 21st Century Fox has acquired broadcast rights to the planned Indian Premier League-style football competition, according to the Economic Times newspaper.
The tournament is being developed by IMG-Reliance, a joint venture between the IMG agency and Indian conglomerate Reliance, under a 10-year deal that includes equity in the venture, the report said. IMG-Reliance has the commercial rights for All India Football Federation competitions under a 15-year deal that began in 2010-11.
IMG-Reliance has long been seeking to develop a new football league based on cricket’s commercially successful IPL twenty20 cricket competition and the newspaper said that Star India had elected to take a one-third stake in the company that will run the competition, alongside IMG-Reliance.
Star India is said to have initially considered acquiring solely the broadcast rights to the league, but will now pay Rs20bn (€239.5m/$325.3m) for equity and broadcast rights for 10 years, from 2014 to 2023. The Times of India newspaper said that the deal is more likely to be worth Rs15bn.
“India is hungry for its second sport,” Star India chief executive Uday Shankar said. “Our attempt is to bring an unparalleled football experience to our viewers. We want to put India on the global map.”
The new league is set to feature eight franchises across the cities of Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Kochi, Goa, Delhi, Pune and Bangalore. Its inaugural season will reportedly run from January to March next year.