Match Highlights: Inside India’s big sports power shift and what it means for cricket and beyond – Key Moments

Sports minister Mansukh Mandaviya was respectful but unambiguous. Each club would pay ₹1 crore to participate in a truncated football season starting in February. The All India Football Federation (AIFF) would organize it. There would be no alternative structure, no renegotiation.

And, crucially—no option to decline or withdraw.

“The minister was courteous, but the message was firm,” recalls one ISL club chief executive, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There was no option of not signing. You either accepted the deal or risked being shut out.”

The meeting salvaged a football season that had been in limbo for six months. But its significance extends far beyond the ISL’s immediate crisis. What unfolded that afternoon was the opening act of India’s National Sports Governance Act—a law that became operational at midnight on 31 December, arguably the most comprehensive assertion of state control over Indian sport in the country’s history.

The Act grants the government sweeping powers to regulate sporting bodies, oversee elections, resolve disputes through a central tribunal, and intervene where administrative failure paralyses sport. Specifically, it states, “The Central government shall … constitute a National Sports Tribunal … to provide for the independent, speedy, effective and cost-efficient disposal of sports related disputes…. The tribunal shall formulate its own procedure for the conduct of its business including the timelines to be followed for the disposal of matters.”

The government monetarily supports most sports apart from cricket in the country. Yet, for decades, those in power had largely avoided direct operational involvement, mindful of international rules that emphasize federation autonomy.

This meant that the intermediate agencies (federations) played an important role in administering government funding and organizing sports in the country. Over the years, as these federations had their own rules for elected officials and their tenures, they became fiefdoms of the few who ran them. This led to inefficient allocation of government spending over the years and led to imbalanced development of sports across the country.

What unfolded that afternoon was the opening act of India’s National Sports Governance — arguably the most comprehensive assertion of state control over Indian sport in the country’s history.

That distance maintained by the state is now narrowing decisively. With India setting its sights on hosting the 2036 Olympics and transforming a ₹16,634 crore ($1,980 million) sports industry into a tool for youth engagement and national identity, the 6 January football meeting wasn’t just about restarting a league—it was a demonstration of the government’s new playbook.

The sweeping new law

Over the next 12 months, the Act’s provisions will cascade across India’s sporting federations, from athletics to wrestling, badminton to boxing. For the first time, that framework extends—at least in principle—to cricket.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has, for decades, maintained that it is a private, non-profit association, accountable only to its members and therefore outside government regulation. That position allowed it to operate differently from every other sports federation in the country.

The stakes are substantial. According to communication company GroupM’s (since rebranded as WPP Media) India Sports Sponsorship Report 2024, the sports industry was worth ₹16,634 crore ($1,980 million) in 2024, with cricket commanding an overwhelming 85% share— ₹14,173 crore ($1,687 million). The game’s commercial dominance is even more pronounced in media spending, where it accounts for 94% of all sports-related advertising investments (including sports-related spends, sponsorship, celebrity endorsements and media spends per year).

Ratnakar Shetty, former administrative head of the BCCI, believes cricket’s exceptional status is no longer tenable under the new law. “The BCCI has always projected itself as an independent body,” he says. “But under the current dispensation of the law, cricket will come under the government’s ambit.”

The shift, Shetty points out, is structural, not symbolic. “Once a sport falls within a statutory framework, the question is no longer whether the government should intervene. The question becomes how that oversight is exercised.”

Cricket’s expected inclusion in the Olympic programme from 2028 makes that fear real.

If the BCCI can theoretically be brought under the Act’s statutory framework, few federations can realistically claim immunity. The BCCI will have to comply with the new Act though it may not be subject to the Right to Information (RTI) Act as it receives no funding from the government and is listed as a non-profit trust.

Proof of concept

The ISL crisis illustrates precisely the kind of administrative paralysis the Act was designed to address—and the kind of state intervention it now enables.

The league had been in limbo for over six months after its master rights agreement with Football Sports Development Ltd (FSDL), the Reliance-backed entity that had launched the league in 2014 and operated it thereafter, expired at the end of 2025. When the AIFF floated a new tender seeking a replacement operator, no bidder submitted a final offer.

Potential investors were wary of a structure that placed commercial risk on the operator while reserving strategic control for the federation. As months passed, clubs incurred costs, players trained without certainty, sponsors delayed payments, and stadiums lay idle. Says an official from the Reliance-backed FSDL, “Today, we are not sure if federations have any skin in the game except the revenue they get from franchisees.”

Under the new Act, the government possesses explicit authority to step in, and exercised that power in less than a week of its passing.

Under the truncated format, clubs will pay participation fees but receive no central revenue. “Earlier, clubs received ₹10-15 crore annually as their share of advertising revenue,” says a Mumbai-based owner. “This season, that figure is close to zero.”

The financial implications are stark in a sector where, according to the GroupM report, emerging sports—everything beyond cricket—contributed ₹2,461 crore ($293 million) in 2024, showing impressive 19% year-on-year growth. Football, as India’s second-most-followed sport with over 100 million fans, represents a significant portion of that expanding market.

The ISL restart demonstrates the Act’s most immediate impact: the government can now impose solutions when there is a deadlock between a federation and its commercial partners.

Towards statutory control

The Act, in a sense, represents the government’s attempt to restore order after a decade in which court decisions governed Indian sport.

Hockey, the national sport, is perhaps the best example. At one point, two federations fought to be recognized as the national body, leading it to be placed under a committee of administrators by courts. Though Hockey India was eventually the chosen one, it still contends with teams affiliated with the older Indian Hockey Federation in a few states.

Almost every big sport in India has needed legal intervention. Courts appointed a committee of administrators to oversee the functioning of the BCCI in 2019 and the AIFF in 2022; the volleyball and badminton federations have seen court battles for non-compliance with the National Sports Code of 2011.

For a long time, courts became the default regulators of sport.” – Nandan Kamath

The Supreme Court of India has played a pivotal role in reforming the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), notably in 2022-23, by appointing Justice L. Nageswara Rao to oversee amendments to the IOA constitution and conduct elections.

“For a long time, courts became the default regulators of sport,” says Nandan Kamath, a sports law expert who has advised federations and policymakers. “Every election dispute went to court. Every governance failure was litigated. There were hundreds of cases.”

No individual shaped that judicial phase more than Rahul Mehra, a lawyer whose petitions led to landmark Supreme Court judgements. Courts mandated that close to 40% of a federation’s governing body comprise sportspersons, coaches and referees.

“I went to court for the voiceless players,” Mehra says. “My fight was about transparency, accountability and player representation.”

But well-intentioned judicial activism seems to have laid the ground for micromanagement. Kamath points to instances where courts required general body approval for commercial deals above ₹5 crore. “No one who has run a federation would design such a system,” he says. “An annual general meeting costs ₹30-40 lakh. You can’t convene one for every deal.”

Yet Mehra argues that the Act dilutes the safeguards courts had established. “Player representation is no longer guaranteed,” he says. “It exists at the whim of whoever holds power.”

But replacing courts with a government regulator that is not meaningfully independent creates, he concedes, “a different kind of moral hazard.

Kamath acknowledges the risk. The absence of a statutory regulator created “a moral hazard—the people supervising federations were often the same people funding them.” But replacing courts with a government regulator that is not meaningfully independent creates, he concedes, “a different kind of moral hazard. If regulation becomes indistinguishable from administration, you haven’t solved the problem—you’ve just moved it.”

The elephant in the room

India is preparing a bid to host the 2036 Olympics—a goal that demands systematic governance reform across all sporting federations.

A senior Reliance executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, reveals that top cabinet ministers view sport as a strategic sector capable of unifying the nation’s youth. “The government is willing to do what it takes to advance the prospects of sports,” the executive says. “The idea is to set the stage to win more medals in an Indian Olympics, whenever it takes place.”

Saba Karim, a former India cricketer and ex-BCCI board member, views the Act through this lens: “For grassroots sport, governance matters. If India is serious about the Olympics, systems have to improve.”

The government’s calculation appears to be that private capital alone—while successful in creating commercial value—has not delivered Olympic medals or broad-based sports participation. Kamath frames the challenge: “There is no future for India without sport. Right now we’ve tapped it as a spectator market. We haven’t tapped it as a participatory market. That requires confidence that rules won’t change midstream.”

Yet, the government’s intervention in the ISL—rewriting commercial terms, imposing participation requirements—represents precisely the kind of midstream rule change that gives private investors pause.

The private money question

Before the ISL’s launch in 2014, football was largely confined to regional pockets. The sport was for the most part associated with a few clubs in eastern India and Goa. and the federation didn’t do much to popularize football in the rest of the country. In March 2015, India’s men’s team ranked 173 in the FIFA global ranking. Creditably, it rose to 96 in August 2018, but has since slipped again to 141. Yet, thanks to the league, football is the country’s second-most-followed sport. TV viewership for broadcaster Jio surpassed the 150 million mark in 2024.

Critics fear the Act threatens this model. “Federations don’t own sport,” Shetty says. “They exist to serve it. If private partners feel they cannot operate commercially, they will walk away.”

Says Prasanth Shanthakumaran, head of digital engineering and sports sector at KPMG: “A lot of young industrialists in the country want to invest in sports—we see it as a $40 billion opportunity by 2030. A key deterrent was the state of federations in the country and at this juncture we see the new sports law as an enabler to get the house in order.”

Meanwhile, cricket faced its own commercial headwinds in 2024. Team India played just 44 matches compared to 64 in 2023—a 31% reduction that constrained sponsorship opportunities. The International Cricket Council’s new “Less is More” philosophy reduced the roster from 20 sponsors to just four premier partners and six global partners. While individual deal values increased, total cricket sponsorship revenues grew just 3%, according to the GroupM report.

These were temporary and structural headwinds rather than regulatory ones. But they illustrate the ecosystem’s sensitivity to changes in commercial terms—raising questions about whether government regulation will smooth volatility or introduce new uncertainties.

The Act’s supporters point to successes outside pure market logic. Distance running, according to GroupM, contributed 23.5% of non-cricket sponsorship spending in 2024, driven partly by corporate sponsorships but also by public infrastructure and community organization. Similarly, much of emerging sports’ 19% growth came from Paris Olympics sponsorships (led by Reliance and Adani Group).

The government’s bet appears to be that strategic regulation will unlock participatory markets, even if it introduces friction in the spectator market, which currently dominates revenues.

A defining moment

For Rahul Mehra, the danger lies in mistaking control for reform. “Sport does not thrive in fear,” he says. “It thrives on trust.” He believes the ISL restart sets a precedent: “Once the state becomes the ultimate fixer, every future stalemate will be resolved the same way.”

Sport does not thrive in fear..It thrives on trust.” – Rahul Mehra

The broader industry data from GroupM reveals what’s at stake. Media spending on sports grew 7% in 2024 to reach ₹7,989 crore ($951 million), with digital advertising surging 25% to ₹3,588 crore. Athlete endorsements crossed ₹1,000 crore for the first time, reaching ₹1,224 crore with 32% year-on-year growth—the highest annual growth rate in 14 years.

This growth was built on a relatively light regulatory touch. Will greater government control enhance or undermine it?

The answer may differ across sports. Cricket may chafe under regulation. Emerging sports may welcome government support. The National Sports Governance Act fundamentally alters the balance that built the ₹16,634 crore industry.

The government has demonstrated it can impose order and restart leagues. Whether it can build institutions that endure—without discouraging the private capital that fuelled nearly sevenfold growth or marginalizing athletes—remains the unanswered question that will define Indian sport for the next decade.