MUMBAI: A Times of India report published Monday that Mumbai FC, the city’s only I-League club, are said to be in advanced discussions with their Indian Super league (ISL) counterparts, Mumbai City FC regarding a merger, simply does not cut any ice with the reality on the ground, SportzPower believes.
TOI, quoting sources, reported that the Essel Group-owned Mumbai FC, has “strongly expressed their interest in buying a stake” in Mumbai City FC – jointly owned by renowned chartered accountant Bimal Parekh and Hindi film A lister Ranbir Kapoor.
Without getting into the reasons offered by the newspaper for Mumbai FC’s interest in the reported merger, here are two compelling reasons that would mitigate against any such move:
1. What has changed so dramatically for a club that operates under the tightest budget of all the I-League clubs (with the possible exception of Shillong Lajong FC), to even consider annual investments of Rs400 million+ that comes with an ISL play. The point is even more pertinent keepng in mind that the club had to publicly quash rumours that is was contempating shutting shop last year ahead of the 2015-2016 I-League season kick-off.
2. What would convince media baron and Essel chairman Subhash Chandra to become a co-owner of a franchise where the ISL parent body has rival Star India as a controlling stakeholder? A mid-term profit potential for his investments? But with the next three years at least expected to remain cash burn for all the franchises such a scenario is not on the horizon.
Even if there was a profit potential, SportzPower believes that it would still take a lot of convincing for Chandra to take the plunge.
So the larger question that then arises is why has Chandra remained invested in football through Mumbai FC though it has been a loss making proposition from Day 1? SportzPower believes it harks back to the reasons Chandra got into Indian football in the first place. When Chandra’s Zee Group announced a ten-year partnership with the All India Football Federation in 2005, the larger mandate was to “revive the passion for football” in the country. And it came out of an agreement between Chandra and then AIFF president Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi. That the popular Congress politician has been in a coma since 2008 following a massive stroke is a matter of record.
The precise how and why is a matter of speculation, but SportzPower is convinced that Mumbai FC is a legacy investment where hard nosed business dynamics have been kept in the background.
For any fresh moves into football, a whole new set of far more convincing parameters would have to be presented before Zee invests, is SportzPower’s considered view in this matter.
