MUMBAI: Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL), organisers of the Indian Super League, Thursday announced plans to invite bids from interested parties to “enrol and participate in the ISL from its fourth edition to be staged in year 2017-2018.
FSDL, a three-way joint venture between Reliance, STar India and IMG, will be floating the tender through ‘Invitation To Bid’ (ITB) to be available on working days starting Friday through to 24th May.
Bids are invited from prospective team owners in respect of 10-cities – Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Cuttack, Durgapur, Hyderabad, Jamshedpur, Kolkata, Ranchi, Siliguri and Thiruvananthapuram.
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Under and subject to the ITB, one (01) to three (03) new winning bidders shall be enrolled and awarded the right to participate in the ISL.
While inviting bids, the ISL organisers clarified that in case Kolkata was one of the new franchises selected was Kolkata based, then the team would have to hold its home games outside Kolkata for the next two consecutive ISL seasons (2017/2018 and 2018/2019).
This means Barasat Stadium can potentially be the home for the second team from Kolkata at least for the next two seasons.
All bidding parties will need to fulfil the eligibility criteria and other requirements specified in the ITB including but not limited to summary of plans to operate their team in the league, including the business model and plan to develop the sport at the grassroots level.
The bid documents must be submitted latest by Thursday, 25th May.
Eight Teams currently participate in the ISL – Atletico de Kolkata, Chennaiyin FC, Delhi Dynamos FC, FC Goa, FC Pune City, Kerala Blasters FC, NorthEast United FC and Mumbai City FC.
