If cricket can become a tamasha, can football be far behind? Some could argue, unfairly, that football was always a tamasha. But what Calcutta witnessed — the bringing together of Bollywood and soccer and all the other attendant hype — was unique. The inspiration from the Indian Premier League was self-evident from the very name, Indian Super League. There was no attempt at being original. The ISL harks back to the IPL even though the two games, cricket and football, have no similarity whatsoever. There have already been other heirs of the IPL — badminton, kabaddi, hockey and now football. At the heart of all these ventures is the sudden desire of private business to get involved in sports. The question that sports lovers should ask is whether this involvement is good for sports at all. The primary motive behind the involvement of private business is the promotion of its own interests, the building of its own brand. The game itself is of little or no consequence: it only provides the piggyback for the brand to ride. If the example of IPL is an indicator, then the experiment should not be repeated in any other sport.

In the past, both cricket and tennis have gone through the experience — Lancashire League cricket and Jack Kramer’s tennis circuit. But these were driven by the need to take the two games out of the rule of amateurs. The aim was to make the two games more open and their success did wonders to cricket and tennis. So did Kerry Packer’s intervention in cricket, even though Packer was driven by a different agenda. Today, what the Lancashire League and Kramer tried to do would be an anachronism since all sports save golf are open, with no distinction between amateurs and professionals. The key element in the present involvement of private business is to bring in non-sporting figures to enhance the attraction for the ‘event’. That last word is important: people go to see IPL or ISL not because of the game per se but because of the other elements – a glimpse of a film star dancing, for example. The dribble past a defender or the drive past cover is no longer the principal attraction. This is mainly why a question mark will always hang over the attempt of private businessmen to cash in on the popularity of sports.