New Delhi: Bhaichung Bhutia advised the All India Football Federation to wait for the Supreme Court to provide a pathway before continuing negotiations over renewal of master rights agreement (MRA) with its marketing partners.
The former India captain flew to New Delhi to attend AIFF’s executive committee on Monday where an eight-member task force was formed to look into the negotiations and was vocal about AIFF’s failure to undertake due diligence before conducting two meetings with its marketing partners.
Over the two meetings in New Delhi and Mumbai on February 5 and March 5 respectively, the AIFF was offered a no-cash deal along with a proposal to halt promotion and relegation in the top-tier Indian Super League by Reliance subsidiary Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL).
The AIFF were represented by its topmost officials, who, in the absence of alternate proposals or offers from other parties, could only mumble that they would think over it, after FSDL claimed to have suffered a Rs 5000 crore loss since they introduced ISL in the Indian football calendar in 2014.
The top federation officials then conducted a hush-hush meeting in Kolkata on March 9 where they floated an idea of a new 16-team league, even before taking all executive committee members into confidence. But at the executive committee meeting on Monday, the new league topic wasn’t broached at all, Bhutia said.
“Confidential clauses of the MRA were discussed. I reminded the AIFF that along with its constitution, the matter is pending in Supreme Court. In the draft constitution Justice L Nageswar Rao has clearly mentioned that the top most competition of the country should be organised by the AIFF though they might have a commercial partner to market it.
“Hence I suggested that MRA negotiations should be kept on hold till the Supreme Court passes a judgement on the AIFF constitution. As the next hearing is on April 16, the entire matter could get decided within a month,” Bhutia told News9 Sports.
‘Due diligence’
Abstinence from holding meetings with its marketing partners though shouldn’t stop the AIFF from conducting due diligence of the market and evaluate the value of ISL, which they have not yet done so far, the former striker said, calling for the governing body to be more organised before sitting at the negotiation table.
“I asked if the AIFF had conducted any home work and had sufficient data on these matters before entering into discussions and received a negative reply. It is amazing that till now no valuation has been done by the AIFF for broadcast, OTT deals before beginning negotiations.
“The AIFF must conduct a research to determine the valuation of the ISL. When the MRA was signed in 2010, it included a deal only for broadcast rights. But now the situation is different as OTT platforms have come in and viewers prefer to live stream matches now,” he pointed out.
‘States need more money’
Bhutia also stressed on the dearth of quality players and stressed on the need to overhaul the youth development programme, suggesting more funds to be handed to state associations for conduction of grass-root events for the better part of the year.
“Players will emerge from districts and states. So giving only Rs 12 lakh to states for youth programmes isn’t enough. The state associations need much more to conduct these age-specific competitions for at least six-seven months.
“Right now the AIFF is depending on private parties for youth leagues, but it nudge the state associations to do more by offering greater allocation of funds,” he said, adding that no concrete discussion happened on the topic of incorporating Person of Indian Origin (PIO) and Overseas Indian-Origin players (OCA).
“The debate over PIO/OCA players is not a new thing. It was there during my playing days as well and former Newcastle United striker Michael Chopra had trained with us in Dubai before the 2011 AFC Asian Cup. But nothing came off it,” Bhutia observed.
Current government rules permit only Indian passport holders to represent the country.
Bhaichung Bhutia is not in favour of the AIFF’s decision to form an eight-member task force to look into the MRA negotiations with its marketing partners Football Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
