Arunava about Football A look at football & the world through my eyes!
Related Articles
As XtraTime reports, representatives of the I-League clubs met with AIFF officials at Football House in New Delhi to discuss the way forward for the I-League for the 2017-18 season till the road map for Indian Football in the medium and long term is finalised with assistance and guidance from the Asian Football Confederation.
The clubs placed their demands to the federation for the upcoming 2017/18 season with these to be discussed by the I-League Committee.
TV coverage / promotion dilemma of AIFF / IMGR – I-League v/s ISL………………
Lets now analyse the marketing promotion and TV coverage aspects of ISL and I-League which can place AIFF IMGR in a tight corner –
1) ISL and I-League are now both recognised by AFC but AFC considers I-League as the League-1 of India and considers ISL as the League-2 of India.
It doesn’t matter what everyone thinks or what the reality is , AFC considers I-League to be of superior status than the ISL.
2) IMGR and AIFF both have contractual obligations to operate the ISL and I-League.
So, AIFF and IMGR now needs a strong reason to provide better TV coverage and marketing promotion to ISL in comparison to I-League. Either AIFF / IMGR should provide more importance to I-League or else they have to provide equal importance to both the leagues. If AIFF / IMGR decides to choose anything different then they need to come up with a formal explanation and be ready to explain the same to the AFC
Its unfair for Tata and Jindal’s Bengaluru FC..
AFC’s recent decision to officially recognise ISL as the League-2 of India instead of League-1 may hurt the brand aspirations of the 2 new ISL clubs owned by Tata Steel and Jindal Steel.I believe before proposal submission , representatives of Tata Steel and Jindal Steel
were informed by AIFF/IMGR that ISL is going to become the League-1 of India from this year itself.
Till last year ISL was an unofficial event and was no doubt the most glamorous football event in India. So , there could have been no comparison with the official I-League.However, from now on both the two Leagues are official and AFC has officially assigned Rank-1 to I-League.
This can seriously hurt the brand image of Tata Steel and Jindal Steel. Both these two companies have an international business model and its very important for them to be associated with Top entities , officially as well as public opinion wise. In the world of Indian movies if ISL is now the
glamorous Filmfare Award then the I-League is the National Movie Award. No doubt the later one is theoretically much more prestigious.
It would be fair if AIFF-IMGR now provides an option to these 2 clubs to join the I-League instead of ISL. AFC has made it clear that within possibly 1 year AIFF need to consolidate the two leagues. AIFF-IMGR had initially thought that they can easily dispose the I-League and crown ISL as the formal League-1 of India.After AFC’s recent mandate, probably from next year the ISL clubs would join the I-League and the new league would either get a new brand name or else AIFF would retain the brand name I-league,
So, it makes sense for AIFF/IMGR to provide an option to these two steel clubs to join the I-League this season and then continue in the Consolidated League from next year onwards. In that way, on pen and paper , Tata Steel and Jindal Steel would not get formally associated with the 2nd division league of India and that too after paying 15 crore INR.