Dubai: After the Super i1 Series in motorsport, it's the turn of football in the soccer-crazy state of West Bengal in eastern India to take the cue from the Indian Premier League (IPL).
The Premier League Soccer (PLS) — a six-team high profile affair that will kick off shortly — has made the international football community sit up with the array of recent greats that they are taking on board.
Fabio Cannavaro, the World Cup-winning Italian captain who had spent the 2010-11 season with Al Ahli Club in Dubai, fetched a price tag of $830,000 (Dh3.04 million) per season offered by one of the franchises in the auction on Monday. Hernan Crespo, the former Argentine and Chelsea star, was the highest paid footballer though when he went for his base price of $ 840,000.
Former French midfielder Robert Pires ($800,000), former English and Liverpool star Robbie Fowler ($530,000) and Nigerian international Jay Jay Okocha ($550,000) were the other big names who were acquired by the franchisees.
The ambitious venture, modelled in the lines of IPL, now boasts of an estimated net worth of $3.7 billion from the auction of franchises, sale of telecast rights etc. There will be six franchises in the inaugural edition named after some of the districts in the state of West Bengal — Kolkata, Howrah, Barasat, Durgapur, Midnapore and Haldia (the last one being yet to be sold). Each team will have one iconic player, one iconic coach, two overseas players and one overseas player of Asian origin — and Cannvaro will be assuming the icon's role for Siliguri.
"The response has been unbelievable, considering that all the franchises had to buy into a completely new idea," said Bhaskar Goswami, executive director of Celebrity Management Group (CMG), whose phone has not stopped ringing with media requests every since the news broke.
Transfer formalities
Speaking to Gulf News from Kolkata soon after completing the international transfer formalities of Crespo, Goswami said: "As per agreement with the team owners, they will have a 50 per cent share of the central revenue coming from TV rights, gate receipts and can generate their own revenue from sponsorships."
They have sold the global TV rights to international sports media company MP & Silva for the first season, the date of kick-off of which will be decided after a meeting of the franchise owners, the state's governing body Indian Football Association (IFA) and the promoters tomorrow. "The PLS will be beamed in over 50 countries while we are in talks at the moment for South Asian rights. As per our homework, the teams should be making profits from the second year onwards," Goswami said.
Apart from icons like Cannavaro or Crespo in each team, the rest of the players in the squad will be Indians with six U-21, six ‘catchment' (local) players and nine to 14 top Indian players who are not part of the National League there. There will be another auction to decide on the Indian players in the first week of February.
Asked for his take on the PLS, Baichung Bhutia, the biggest Indian star, chose to tread cautiously. "It's a new concept and I am sure it will be quite challenging," the former Indian captain said over phone. Incidentally, Bhutia is in talks with one of the franchisees — Barasat — to be involved in a consultative role.
