New Delhi: The All India Football Federation has received three bids on a 20-year (15+5) commercial rights of its club tournaments, five months after attracting no interest for them.
By the deadline day of March 26 (Thursday), AIFF received quotations from Genius Sports, Fancode and Capri Sports in an encouraging turn of fortunes considering that in November they received no bids when it put all their club tournaments in a single bucket for commercialisation.
London-based data and analytics firm Genius Sports, which has the English Premier League among its clients, offered roughly Rs 2129 crore over the next 20 years compared to Fancode’s Rs 1190 crore (approx) for the same period.
Capri Sports placed a bid of Rs 150 crore for 20 years for the top tier Indian Women’s League and the second division IWL 2, with Rs 4.5 crore for the first year, including a 5 percent increase every year.
All quotations were inclusive of a 5 percent year-on-year increment that pegged Genius’ investment to Rs 64 crore in the first year vis-a-vis Fancode’s to Rs 36 crore for the men’s top flight Indian Super League and Federation Cup (formerly Super Cup).
AIFF opens bids for RFP for Commercial rights of club competitions.#IndianFootball ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/o71aKfAAxQ
— Indian Football (@IndianFootball) March 27, 2026
AIFF is set to receive 20% of the amount committed to be spent each year, amounting to around Rs 12.8 crore (Rs 91 lakh from Capri from a total spend of Rs 4.5 crore for the first year).
Commerical partners will provide 70% of the revenue to AIFF, from which clubs will get 60%.
Cost of maintenance of refereeing department and staff for ISL being around Rs 6 crore, AIFF is expected to keep around Rs 6 crore in hand in the first year.
Clubs were briefed about the bids on Friday, with discussions set to continue on Saturday before a final call is taken by AIFF’s executive committee on Sunday.
“Things are looking up. Whatever the executive committee decides, we will go with it,” AIFF’s deputy secretary general M Satyanarayan told News9 Sports.
“These are composite totals for 20-year valuation. Yearly this value will increase and reach around Rs 106 crore,” a person aware of the development observed.
Key takeaways
AIFF would own a 10 percent stake in the company that would run operations, with 60 percent belonging to clubs and the remaining 30 percent with the prospective commercial partners.
From 2010, AIFF received Rs 50 crore per year on an average from its previous marketing partners FSDL till December 2025 when the contract expired leading to all-round uncertainty and delay in commencement of the 2025-26 ISL.
Clubs surmised that the asking price of Genius is Rs 64 crore but Fancode’s is 36 crore, making chances of deriving profit vrom market sales more in the later offer.
Hence they are still contemplating about taking a decision. During the FSDL era, they received an average of Rs 18-20 crore as part of central revenue pool in the last few years.
“The central revenue pool, which included a hefty broadcast rights deal, is the key component that clubs are looking into,” a club official said.
Fancode had won the broadcast and digital rights for 2025-26 ISL for approximately Rs 8.62 crore, which is a part of AIFF’s income along with the Rs 1 crore participation fee from clubs.