Chuni Goswami has seen it all. The former ace footballer vowed never to go overseas to play for India when he and his team were put up at a musafir khana in Mumbai on their way to Kuala Lumpur. The year was 1964, and the Indian team, captained by Goswami, was to play an international tournament in Malaysia.

“I decided that I would never play abroad because of the shabby way footballers were treated,” Goswami says. He also realised that there was no money in football.

Nearly 40 years later, Goswami was elated when he learnt that the East Bengal team, which won the ASEAN Cup in Jakarta in 2003, had stayed at a seven-star hotel there, thanks largely to the corporate sponsor the club had roped in, Vijay Mallya’s UB group.

After being ignored for decades, football’s prospects are suddenly looking up. Companies are now pumping money into the game. Apart from the UB group, football is being supported by a wide spectrum of companies, from Subhash Chandra’s Essel group and Sunil Mittal’s Bharti group to Neville Tuli’s Osian’s, an online art gallery. Subroto Roy’s Sahara Parivar, too, has pitched in, pledging to fund the Calcutta football league for five years.

Essel group’s Subhash Chandra

Anil Ambani’s Reliance is said to be interested in floating a club. All India Football Federation (AIFF) general secretary Alberto Colaco says representatives of Ambani’s group recently attended an AIFF workshop for companies and expressed the group’s desire to start a professional club. “They have been talking to us and our marketing partner Zee Sports,” he says.

Not surprisingly, football lovers are optimistic. “This is the only way to professionalise the game,” says Union information and broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, who heads the AIFF.

Das Munshi says that the Bharti group plans to set up a football academy near Delhi and a training centre for boys under 16 in Goa. “AIFF is buying land in Goa and is in talks with the Haryana government for plots needed for the academy,” he says. AIFF is holding talks with telecom company Vodafone and a private petroleum company about sponsoring the national league. The national football league will be named after the company the AIFF signs the deal with. “The colour and complexion of Indian football will change once we finalise the national league title sponsorship,” Das Munshi exclaims.

Companies are floating professional clubs, too. The Essel group has pumped in close to Rs 5 crore to found the Mumbai Football Club (MFC), along the lines of professional European clubs with a focus on “youth programmes and on turning the club into a profit-making venture,” says Henry Menezes, general manager of the club.

MFC has other plans, too: state-of-the-art stadiums, good fields, and forming professional marketing, sales and advertising wings for football. Peninsula Land Limited of the Ashok Piramal group, setting up a football club in Pune, has similar ideas. “We’d like to have our own stadium, and put in a lot of hard work for marketing, nurturing talent and creating the right kind of environment so that people will shell out twice as much money as for a movie ticket for 90 minutes of thrilling action,” says Darius Chenoy of corporate and strategic planning, Peninsula.

Neville Tuli (centre) inaugurates Osian’s Durand Cup 2007

Not content with sponsoring the Durand Cup, the country’s oldest football tournament, Osian’s took over New Delhi Heroes, a football club in the capital, a year ago. Tuli of Osian’s says that the tournament and the club will cost it Rs 3-4 crore a year but he is committed to “making a whole generation fall in love with football.”

To be sure, companies such as JCT, Dempo and Mahindra & Mahindra have had a presence in football for years. But they mostly ran their own in-house clubs. The UB group’s entry changed all this. Mallya picked up a 50 per cent equity stake in the Mohun Bagan and East Bengal teams in the late 1990s and renamed the clubs McDowell Mohun Bagan and Kingfisher East Bengal after two of its popular brands.

Seven years later, East Bengal general secretary Kalyan Majumdar says that the club no longer needs to “go around with a begging bowl.” Majumdar says the club retains its independence in matters related to the game, while the board handles the finance and monitors performances. “The club doesn’t need to look for sponsors every year while the group gets a chance to promote its brands in national and international matches,” says Amit Sen, the UB group-appointed director on the East Bengal board.

It’s also clear that changing market realities are steering companies to football. For one, the cost of cricket sponsorships has hit the sky, prompting many advertisers to turn to other sports, says an advertising professional. For another, faced with near-saturated urban markets, companies are trying to reach the burgeoning middle class in small towns and football is the “perfect advertising vehicle,” the insider adds.

With Zee Sports, the television channel, entering into a 10-year contract with the AIFF in 2005 to telecast domestic tournaments live, the game’s visibility has shot up. The deal has filled the AIFF’s coffers with Rs 270 crore and the prospect of live matches has made the game “an attractive business proposition” to company sponsors, says AIFF vice president Subrata Dutta.

That’s not all. The Indian Football Association, the football association of Bengal, has signed a four-year contract with TV channel Star Ananda for the telecast rights of the Calcutta football league from 2008.

The burst of activity is already making an impact on the game. Clubs such as MFC and East Bengal can now afford to hire foreign players and coaches. While MFC has recruited David Booth, a Briton and the former coach of the national football teams in Burma and Brunei, East Bengal has hired MacDonald Mukansi, who was in South Africa’s 2002 World Cup team.

That, in turn, offers many footballers a glimmer of hope. “I am not saying we could win the World Cup, but we could now certainly try and qualify for it,” says East Bengal’s midfielder Alvito d’Cunha.

But will money make for a better game? India’s current FIFA ranking is down to 145 from 94 in 1996. As Dutta puts it, India’s football infrastructure is in a shambles. Only the Karnataka football association has its own ground.

But footballer Chima Okerie, now the coach of New Delhi Heroes, believes that with corporate funding, Indian football has only one way to go — up. “Corporate involvement will improve the quality of football in India. I see a plethora of fine young footballers in India in 10 years’ time,” he says. “I see a big industry in the making — a football industry. Brace yourself! This is take-off time.”

Corporate kickoff

The Bharti group will set up a training centre for boys under 16 in Goa and a football academy near Delhi. Bharti and Vodafone and a private sector petroleum company are in talks with the All India Football Federation (AIFF) to sponsor the national league title.

Anil Ambani’s Reliance is in talks with the AIFF to start a professional club.

The Essel group has floated Mumbai Football Club and the group’s television channel Zee Sports has signed a 10-year contract with AIFF to telecast domestic tournaments.

The Piramal group has floated the Pune Football Club.

Osian’s, the art auction company, has taken over football club New Delhi Heroes along with sports management firm Infinity Optimal Solutions. Last year, it also bought the rights to the Durand Cup, India’s oldest football tournament, for five years

The UB group already backs Mohun Bagan and East Bengal.

The Mahindra and Mahindra group has Mahindra United.

Additional reporting by Shubhobroto Ghosh in Calcutta