Inside ISL's financial reset: Why clubs are learning to spend less

The Indian Super League is entering a season of financial recalibration, with its clubs attempting to cut costs, rebuild commercial confidence and establish a league structure that can sustain itself rather than rely indefinitely on owner funding.

For Ravi Puskur, CEO of FC Goa and a member of the ISL Governing Council, the central challenge is straightforward: Indian football has to become more financially sustainable without compromising the quality or appeal of its flagship league.

The previous season was effectively a stopgap. With uncertainty over whether the ISL would even be played until the turn of the year, clubs operated in limbo before eventually staging a truncated competition.

“Everything that happened last season I would consider a bonus because up until the turn of the new year, we didn't even know whether we were going to play a league,” Puskur told The Bridge.

“A lot of the clubs were essentially in limbo where we did not know whether we would play, whether we would not play, whether there was going to be any commerciality to it if we played.”

The 2025-26 season eventually went ahead as a shortened competition, but Puskur sees it less as a model for the future and more as an experience from which the league must learn.

The priority now, he said, is to use those lessons to build something “sustainable, a lot more efficient, and a lot more professional.”

The business of spending less

That reset is already visible at the club level.

The objective, however, is not simply to spend less for the sake of it. It is to stop relying on a model in which clubs consistently spend beyond what they can realistically generate.

“We've sort of adjusted our strategies to those realities because sustainability and not mindlessly spending our way through football. We've seen it's not a strategy that has worked well for anyone anywhere in the world,” is the approach FC Goa are taking, Puskur said.

That philosophy also informs how the league itself is being structured.

Puskur stressed that there are effectively two separate financial questions: how the ISL operates as a league and how individual clubs operate as businesses.

“There’s a difference between how the league runs itself and how each club then individually runs itself,” he said.

The league, he argued, needs to become financially self-sufficient.

“We want it to be a sustainable product. We should not be having to bankroll the running of the league, and the league should be able to look after its own finances.”

But even a financially healthy league cannot solve the problem of clubs spending beyond their means.

“No matter how much money the league generates, you will always be in deficit because you have not been able to control your own spending,” he said.

The result, he expects, will be a league in which the financial outcomes differ significantly from club to club.

“You might still see this year there might be clubs that might be losing 30-40 crores, and you might see clubs that are losing 4-5 crores,” Puskur said.

The corporate exit is not one story

The financial reset comes at a time when several major corporate names have reduced or ended their involvement in ISL clubs.

City Football Group exited Mumbai City, Tata Group moved away from Jamshedpur FC, and Kerala Blasters have been linked with a change in ownership.

“I don’t think they’ve all left based on one single agenda point which has forced them all to leave,” Puskur said.

Each case, he said, needs to be understood on its own terms.

“With regards to, for example, even if you look at Jamshedpur FC as well, they have since come out and said that they’re going to be investing significant amounts of money into grassroots and youth football. So it’s not like football is not of interest to them. I think it’s more to do with whatever internal restructuring they had. This is based on information that has been provided on public platforms,” he said.

More broadly, he believes football's economics make it particularly demanding for investors.

“Football is actually a more expensive sport to run as compared to kabaddi, or table tennis, or volleyball or any other sport which might have a single venue ability to run,” he said. “Also runs for the longest period as compared to any other league in the country or any other sporting project.”

That, he said, makes sustainability and cost control increasingly important for clubs.

“The intent is to go in that direction to make the league sustainable and only be in a position to spend money that we feel we're capable of generating in the market,” Puskur said.

Broadcast deal crucial 

Perhaps the most important immediate commercial test is the ISL's next broadcast agreement.

Last season's truncated competition was streamed by FanCode and televised by Sony, but no broadcaster had been announced for the new season at the time of publishing this article.

He rejected the idea that last season's audience figures should become the benchmark for assessing the league's commercial value.

“Last season was a one-off,” he said. “It should not be the yardstick that we compare against and undo the credit and the work of the previous 10 to 12 years of work that the ISL and the clubs did.”

The next broadcast partner will therefore be judged on more than the size of its cheque.

“We’re not just looking at saying who puts the highest offer on the table,” Puskur said.

The league will also consider “reach, accessibility” and the editorial environment around its matches.

“It’s very important for us also to understand reach, accessibility, and very important for us also is editorial this year about sort of the conversations that are had on television, what is being said, what sort of liberty is given, and we want to have all those conversations,” he said.

That means the broadcast decision is not simply about maximising immediate rights revenue. The league also wants a platform capable of rebuilding its relationship with viewers.

“We’ve not announced the broadcaster, but we don’t feel like we’re too far away from doing that either,” he said.

Puskur said the league had imposed a 30-31 day internal deadline, based on the expected start of the season, to complete the process.

A new approach to salary controls

Financial discipline will also have to be enforced within the competition itself.

The salary-cap system was removed for the truncated 2025-26 season, but Puskur said the Governing Council has discussed restrictions on spending again.

The issue is complicated by the mechanisms clubs have previously used to structure player payments.

“You will notice in the past couple of weeks, a landmark judgment came out from the AIFF on side letters and bonus letters and, you know, side agreements that essentially were mechanisms to circumvent the salary cap. So now with the help of the regulatory body, we're able to control that expenditure,” Puskur said.

He acknowledged, however, that no regulatory system can completely eliminate loopholes.

“Any system that one can devise across any spectrum of life, there will always be leakages. It's just about trying to keep tightening it and trying to find more ways to ensure that it's as watertight as it can be,” he said.

Puskur said the league would also take a gradual approach to controlling existing liabilities, given that some clubs had entered into long-term contracts before the current financial reset.

"We have also told all the clubs very transparently that we understand that it might be perhaps unfair to impose severe sanctions immediately in this season because decisions were made, maybe possibly two years ago or three years ago, when they signed long-term contracts,” he said.

The aim, he said, is to prevent excessive spending from becoming a threat to clubs' continued existence.

“But in the last governing council that was held, every ISL club did sign up to the fact that we will now look to control costs. And by virtue of that, first, we will declare what our potential liabilities are. We can create an amnesty scheme based on that, and then basis that, the reduction begins to happen in terms of how much is being spent, and so that there's no excess waste that is going out there that is forcing us to then shut shop,” he added.

Recruitment the answer to a smaller budget?

The financial reset has also changed FC Goa's approach to building its squad.

The club has appointed Gouramangi Singh as head coach, retaining continuity from within the existing ecosystem rather than starting over with a completely new coaching structure.

Puskur said the club had also considered foreign coaches during the rebuild, and the decision was influenced by Singh's familiarity with the club, his previous work with the coaching staff and his experience as an ISL player.

“If it was not Gouramangi, maybe we might not have appointed an Indian coach,” Puskur said. 

The same philosophy extends to recruitment.

With less money available than in previous seasons, FC Goa's sporting and scouting departments now have an opportunity to demonstrate that they can identify value without simply outspending rivals.

The target, Puskur said, remains unchanged.

“The target is nothing short of being a team that every team loathes playing but every fan enjoys watching.”

That ambition is being pursued alongside a stronger emphasis on youth.

“In our squad this season, there are 10 players who are under-23 or below who qualify into the development criteria category,” Puskur said.

Rebuilding trust

Ultimately, Puskur's assessment of the ISL's next phase is less about finding one financial fix and more about rebuilding confidence in the entire product.

Puskur believes the underlying appetite still exists.

“If we play a full season, I still believe that we can bring in more viewership numbers in India than the English Premier League or the La Liga or the French League,” he said.

For him, the viewing figures of the FIFA World Cup demonstrate that the Indian audience remains interested in football.

The challenge now is converting that interest into sustained engagement with the domestic game.

“We hope that we can rebuild that trust and confidence from the Indian audience to come and support the ISL once again,” Puskur concluded.