Eight franchisees of Indian Super League of AIFF announced

The names of the eight franchisees of All India Football Federation's (AIFF) Indian Super League (ISL) were announced on 13 April 2014. The names were announced after competitive bidding was held for the rights to own eight soccer teams in the ISL. The ISL is scheduled to be held in September-November 2014.

During the competitive bidding each winning bidder paid about 25 million dollar for a 10-year contract for each of the eight soccer teams. The base price of each time was fixed at 12 crore rupees and the total money spent on acquiring eight team was 120 crore rupees. The highest price of 18 crore rupees was paid for Kolkata team.

The list of Franchise of ISL
• Delhi: Sameer Manchanda led Den Network
• Bengaluru: Sun Group
• Goa: Dattaraj Salgaocar, Shrinivas V Dempo, Venugopal Dhoot (Videocon)
• Guwahati: John Abraham & Shillong Lajong
• Kochi: Sachin Tendulkar & PVP Ventures
• Kolkata: Sourav Ganguly, Harshavardhan Neotia, Atletico Madrid, Sanjeev Goenka, Utsav Parekh
• Mumbai: Ranbir Kapoor and Bimal Parekh
• Pune: Salman Khan with Kapil Wadhawan and Dheeraj Wadhawan of the Wadhawan Group

About Indian Super League (ISL)
The ISL is an additional tournament after the I-League that will remain the bedrock of the game. It is designed on the lines of Indian Premier League and other professional sporting leagues in India.

The competition is owned equally by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), broadcaster Star India Pvt. Ltd., a unit of Rupert Murdoch’s New York-based 21st Century Fox Inc., and sports agency IMG Worldwide Inc.

The ISL objective is to help India qualify for the 2026 World Cup. At present India is ranked 145th in FIFA's world rankings.

The ISL may see in action the marquee players like former Manchester United star Dwight Yorke, former Arsenal and French star Thierry Henry, former Argentina striker Hernan Crespo and former Swedish star Fredrik Ljungberg.