Sachin Tendulkar, Mukesh Ambani, Ranbir Kapoor and Sanjiv Goenka at the Salt Lake stadium on Sunday evening. Pictures by Anindya Shankar Ray and Mayukh Sengupta

Dazzling lights, large screens, bucket seats, thousands of women spectators, Bollywood and cricket stars in the VIP box.

Pratik Dey Sarkar, 34, couldn’t believe he was watching the Indian Super League opener between Atletico de Kolkata and Mumbai City FC on Sunday evening in a stadium he has been visiting since childhood. “I gasped when I entered the stadium. The lights have transformed it,” he said.

The marketing professional didn’t just “see” a difference at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan, he also “heard” it. “There are no expletives flying around today, unlike during all the matches I have watched here! A Mohun Bagan-East Bengal match is incomplete without hearing obscenities being hurled from the galleries. And today nobody is smoking or carrying alcohol in plastic jars,” he said.

Many in the galleries said they had come or brought along family members because the match wasn’t a derby. “Whenever there is a Mohun Bagan versus East Bengal match, there is a chance of tempers being lost and blows exchanged. Today, the entire city is supporting one team and there shouldn’t be any trouble. So I felt confident enough to bring my daughter Sushmita along,” said 55-year-old Ashok Dey, another Yuba Bharati veteran.

Sushmita, a student of Class X, said she was there as much for Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar as for “ATK’s first-ever match”.

She wasn’t the only young woman drawn to the ground by the celebrity presence in the VIP rows.

Tania Dey Sarkar, who came with husband Pratik, son Aarav and brother-in-law Arjun, said she probably would have stayed home but for the star quotient of the match.

Labony Bhattacharjee, a TV actress watching the match alone, said she was there primarily for Priyanka Chopra because she “idolised” the Bollywood star.

She had her relatively expensive ISL ticket’s worth even before the match had started with her idol performing to a medley of songs as part of the opening ceremony. Priyanka then played emcee, inviting the franchise owners, brand ambassadors and marquee players to the podium.

The biggest cheers were reserved for Sachin Tendulkar, co-owner of the Kerala Blasters, and Sourav Ganguly. The collective roar when the two appeared made it hard to believe that the stadium’s capacity had been reduced to about 68,000 from about 1,20,000 after the installation of bucket seats.

The stadium erupted each time Atletico de Kolkata’s name was announced or fireworks lit up the sky. If the lights and the pyrotechnics set up the mood, the three Atletico goals kept the adrenaline flowing.

The demography of the stadium crowd may have been different from that for a derby but the reactions weren’t. Each foul by Mumbai City FC would invite a cry of indignation typical of a Calcutta football audience. When marquee player Luis Garcia found Fikru Tefera unmarked for the Ethiopian striker to chip the ball over goalie Subrata Paul in the 29th minute, the stadium exploded.

Fikru celebrated with multiple somersaults and Salt Lake stadium did an Eden Gardens, breaking into a Mexican wave that lasted 10 rounds of the galleries.

“Ke bolchhili re (Luis) Garcia buro hoye gechhe (Who was saying that Garcia is too old to play)?” a cacophony of voices demanded to know in one of the galleries.

When Fikru missed two scoring opportunities in the second half, wisecracks like this one flowed: “Break-e ki daal-bhaat kheye eli (Did you have rice and dal during the break)?”

The 17 giant screens, three of them larger than the rest, provided the spectators a ringside view of the action and the replays they never get to see during matches of the I-League and the Calcutta Football League.

The screens also helped the crowd keep track of the celebrity brigade. That the home team won 3-0 was the icing on the cake.

“It was an all-round performance by the team. Atletico’s defence looked solid. The behaviour of the crowd was fantastic as well. If it stays like this, nobody will think twice about coming to the ground for matches,” said 35-year-old Sovabazar resident Abhishek Dey, who had stopped visiting Salt Lake stadium after one of his friends got involved in a brawl with rival supporters.