India has the audience. It does not yet have the business. Football is played and followed across the country, yet almost nobody earns a return from it. Club owners have absorbed losses every year for more than a decade, the league itself has run at a loss, and in July 2025 the sport hit its lowest point when the top division was simply put on hold because the contract funding it was about to run out. Play only resumed in February 2026, in a shortened form, after the sports ministry intervened. That was not bad luck. It is what happens when a sport is built on a business model that was never designed to stand on its own.

The money coming in is too small, and comes from too few places

Football clubs anywhere in the world earn from three sources: broadcast rights, matchday income and commercial partnerships. In India, only the first one really pays, and it pays very little. The master agreement signed in 2010 gave the federation about Rs 50 crore a year (roughly USD 6 million) for the commercial rights to the entire top league and the national team combined. That is less than a single mid-table European club spends on one player. Matchday income barely exists: average attendance in the 2026 season was under 9,000 a game, and most clubs play in government-owned stadiums they do not control, so they earn nothing from parking, food, retail, naming rights or events on the other 350 days of the year. Sponsorship money, meanwhile, is fighting cricket for the same marketing budget and losing. The result is an industry where almost all income arrives as one central cheque. When that cheque is in doubt, everything stops at once.

The cost base was built for a market that never arrived

Costs were set on the assumption that revenue would catch up. It did not. A small pool of players was bid over by owners competing to win, and wages rose far faster than income. The clearest example: one well-run club deliberately cut its spending, finished ninth, and still lost around Rs 20 crore in a season. When a disciplined year still ends in that kind of loss, the problem is structural, not managerial. On top of wages, clubs paid an entry fee to participate and continue to fund a share of league operating costs. There is no version of the current cost base that the current revenue base can carry.

Clubs carried the risk but never owned the asset

This is the single most important commercial flaw. Clubs spent a decade building academies, training grounds, staff and local followings, but the commercial rights to the competition they played in sat with a private rights holder under one contract with the federation. When that contract approached expiry in December 2025, the people who had invested the most had the least say. Eleven clubs wrote jointly to the federation warning they could shut down entirely. Several suspended first-team operations and froze salaries. In any other industry, owners who fund the losses hold the equity. In Indian football, they did not.

Uncertainty is itself a cost

Legal proceedings over the federation’s constitution froze the negotiations that would have set the sport’s commercial terms, and the calendar collapsed as a result. Investors can live with thin margins. They cannot live without a schedule. No sponsor signs a deal, no broadcaster commits money, no fan buys a season ticket and no player signs a contract when nobody can promise that a season will actually be played. The suspension did lasting damage to price: the combined market value of top-division squads fell from roughly Rs 466 crore to Rs 283 crore in a single year as foreign players left and budgets were cut.

Nothing below the top tier has any value

For several years the top division was effectively closed. That removed the commercial logic from the entire pyramid. Clubs in the lower tiers had no realistic route up, so no one invested in them and they never became sellable assets. Top-tier clubs had no risk of falling, so there was no urgency to improve. A healthy football economy works because value flows up and down the pyramid: promotion is worth paying for, relegation is worth avoiding, and academies feed a transfer market. India built a top layer without the machinery underneath it, so there is no talent pipeline that pays for itself and no second-tier asset class for investors to enter at a sensible price.

And there is no way out

Ownership stakes rarely change hands, and when they do, rarely at a premium. There is no established valuation benchmark, no queue of buyers, and no listing route. Without an exit, owning a football club in India is not an investment. It is sponsorship with a logo attached, funded from another business, and it survives only as long as the owner’s patience does.

What would actually change the numbers

None of this is unfixable, but the fixes are commercial rather than sporting. Rights cycles need to be long, eight to ten years, so clubs can plan and borrow against future income. The league entity should be owned substantially by the clubs that carry its losses, aligning risk with reward. Wage spending should be capped as a percentage of each club’s own revenue, which is how leagues elsewhere stopped the same spiral. Clubs need long leases or ownership of their stadiums so that a venue becomes a year-round business rather than a rented pitch. The pyramid needs genuine promotion and relegation so that value exists below the top division. And clubs need a second and third product, women’s football, youth academies, community programmes and content, so revenue does not depend entirely on 13 or 20 home games.

There are signs of movement. The 2026-27 season has a confirmed start date of 4 September, the federation has adopted a revised constitution under the new national sports governance law, and a governing council with authority over commercial decisions is being set up. The direction is right. Whether it works will depend on whether the sport now accepts commercial discipline it has avoided for twelve years.

How SRC can support

SRC works with owners, investors and sports bodies on the financial side of the game.

• Business plans and models — realistic revenue, cost and cash-flow projections that show when, and whether, a club or league can break even.
• Valuation and deal support — valuing clubs and rights, buy-side and sell-side due diligence, and structuring investment into sports entities.
• Cost and wage control — salary caps linked to revenue, budget frameworks and reporting that keep spending inside what the business can afford.
• Structuring and governance — entity structuring, shareholder and rights agreements, board reporting, and controls that investors can rely on.
• Commercial strategy — sponsorship pricing, stadium and matchday revenue plans, and new income lines beyond broadcast.
• Investor readiness — audit-ready reporting, tax and regulatory compliance, and the documentation needed to raise capital or plan an exit.

Prepared by SRC. This document is a general commercial commentary and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice. Figures are drawn from publicly reported information.