BackSachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly foray into football, win ISL bids
IMG-Reliance unveils 8 franchises for the Indian Super League, which is scheduled to be held in Sep-Nov
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Mumbai: Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly were among the host of high-profile winning bidders as the organisers of the much-anticipated Indian Super League (ISL) on Sunday unveiled the eight franchises for the event that is set to take Indian football by storm.
The bid winners for the eight franchises of the league, which is scheduled to be held in September-November, was announced here by organisers IMG-Reliance after evaluation of the bids by a seven-member panel.
Tendulkar bagged the Kochi franchise along with PVP Ventures, which also owns a team in the Indian Badminton League while Ganguly, who bid by forming a consortium with Spanish League giants Atletico Madrid and businessmen Harshavardhan Neotia, Sanjeev Goenka and Utsav Parekh, won the Kolkata franchise.
The Mumbai franchise went to Bollywood star Ranbir Kapoor and Bimal Parekh while another tinsel town biggie Salman Khan bagged the Pune franchise together with Kapil Wadhawan and Dheeraj Wadhawan of the Wadhawan Group.
Another actor John Abraham teamed up with I-League side from the North-east, Shillong Lajong, to bag the franchise to be based in Guwahati.
The remaining three teams went to Sameer Manchanda-led Den Networks Ltd for Delhi, Sun Group, the owners of IPL team Hyderabad Sunrisers, for Bengaluru and the consortium of Venugopal Dhoot of Videocon, Dattaraj Salgaocar and Shrinivas V. Dempo for Goa.
Organised by IMG-Reliance in association with Star India, the league has the backing of All India Football Federation (AIFF), and is set to see big names as icon players such as former France international Robert Pires and ex-Sweden and Arsenal player Fredrik Ljungberg.
Sources said that the organisers received positive response from more than 30 interested parties to its ‘Invitation To Bid’ tender notice, which closed on 27 March.
It is learnt that around 18 to 20 bidders had put in their money on ISL either through forming a consortium or individually. This is for the first time that a franchise property in sports in India has elicit such a response from the business as well as sports and Bollywood community. PTI
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