Perhaps there is some hope in Indian football after all.
On Friday, March 27, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) opened commercial bidding for the Indian Super League (ISL), the Federation Cup and the Indian Women’s League 1 and 2.
What was notable was a mammoth bid of INR 2,129 crore from Genius Sports, a sports technology company based in London, for the ISL and Federation Cup.
The bid was almost double that of the other bidder, FanCode, the broadcast partner of the ongoing ISL season, which bid around INR 1,190 crore, and more than three times the previous Master Rights Agreement of Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL, owned by Reliance), which was around INR 750 crore, signed in 2009.
Considering that the AIFF tender mandated a five percent year-on-year increase, Genius Sports’ 20-year bid – 15+5 – would justify around INR 64 crore in the first year. For FanCode it was INR 36 crore, and for FSDL it was 50 crore 15 years ago.
The bid evaluation report will be presented to the AIFF Executive Committee on March 29 and the final commercial partner will be sealed.
What is Genius Sports?
The English Genius Sports works as a data analysis agency for several top leagues in the world, including the National Football League (American football) and the Premier League (soccer).
«Genius Sports provides scalable, technology-based products and services across the sports ecosystem. Genius Sports’ mission is to be the indispensable technology partner for every league, team, content distributor, sportsbook and brand,» are some of the lines on the company’s ‘About Us’ page.
But the financial statement reveals a different story.
The company has three revenue streams: Sports Technology & Services; Media technology, content and services and betting technology, content and services. In the last three financial years, the main source of income has been the third.
| Financial year | FY’23 | FY’24 | FY’25 |
| Revenue from betting technology, content and services | 274,235 | 354,856 | 471,531 |
| Group income | 412,977 | 510,894 | 669,489 |
| % of group revenue from gambling technology, content and services | 66,404 | 69,457 | 70,431 |
Not a gambling company, says AIFF
Sports betting is largely illegal in India, with the Public Gambling Act, 1867, Section 112 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, the legal measures taken against this.
Between 2022 and June 2025, 1,524 gambling websites and mobile apps were blocked by the central government.
RELATED | Genius Sports is offering Rs. 2129 crore for ISL, Federation Cup commercial rights
Does Genius Sports – which earned 70 percent of its revenue from betting in the last financial year – have a case in this country to take over Indian football commercially?
AIFF Deputy General Secretary M. Satyanarayan is adamant that the company is not a gambling business.
«No. It’s not correct. Genius Sports is like Sportradar (a Swiss sports data and technology company), which collects and provides data,» Satyanarayan told Sportstar.
The rights holder will not be definitively announced until Sunday, but the London-based company could already have made its first brilliant move: establishing that Indian football has customers after all.
Published on March 28, 2026
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