ISL revenue case study
- A detailed thread analysed 11 years of ISL, showing matchday revenue has fallen despite league growth potential. - The study includes a Good Governance Index (GGI) and a League Excellence Rating (LER) to compare clubs. - The framework highlights matchday monetisation and governance questions clubs should track when pitching commercial strategies (x.com).
A new Indian football finance review says Indian Super League clubs are still struggling to turn crowds into cash, even after 11 seasons. (insma.in) The Indian Sport Management Association said its 2026 report, *Fault Lines*, tracks the game from 2014 to the 2024-25 season and includes club-by-club measures for governance and overall league performance. (insma.in) Sarthak Mondal, a University of Portsmouth lecturer whose earlier peer-reviewed ISL finance work covered 2014-15 to 2019-20, found in that study that many franchises had debt and profitability problems and that better financial health did not show a statistical link to better sporting results. (shura.shu.ac.uk) The league started on October 12, 2014, and the All India Football Federation says it was recognised by FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation as India’s top-tier domestic league in October 2019. (the-aiff.com) Attendance has moved the wrong way. Sportstar reported the first ISL season averaged 25,408 fans a match, while the 2024-25 season averaged 11,084, despite the presence of Mohun Bagan and East Bengal. (sportstar.thehindu.com) Broadcast reach has also softened. Sportstar reported ISL television viewership at 429 million in 2014 and said combined TV-and-digital reach for 2024-25 was around 130 million. (sportstar.thehindu.com) That squeeze shows up in club economics. Sportstar reported a mid-table ISL club spent about ₹60 crore last season, with roughly half written off as loss, while clubs received about ₹13 crore to ₹16 crore a year from the league’s central revenue pool. (sportstar.thehindu.com) The governance backdrop has shifted too. In December 2025, RevSportz reported that the All India Football Federation presented clubs with a 20-year proposal for an AIFF-run league, a ₹70 crore central operating budget, and a revised revenue-sharing model. (revsportz.in) That came after the 15-year Master Rights Agreement with Football Sports Development Limited neared expiry in December 2025 and negotiations were caught in litigation over the federation’s constitution. (onmanorama.com) The new report’s Good Governance Index and League Excellence Rating turn those pressures into scorecards clubs can compare across ownership, operations and commercial delivery. The sales pitch is simple: if ticketing, fan experience and reporting standards stay weak, league growth on paper will keep outrunning cash at the gate. (insma.in)
