The leading Spanish football club Atletico Madrid and former cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly are among the owners of eight franchises of a new Indian soccer league set to kick off later this year.
La Liga leaders Atletico and former India captain Ganguly were part of the consortium that won the bid for the Kolkata team in the Indian Super League, proposed to start in mid-September and run till the end of November.
The ISL is bank-rolled by India's Reliance Industries, controlled by the country's richest man Mukesh Ambani, Rupert Murdoch's Star India and the sports management group IMG.
The league, styled on the cash-rich Indian Premier Cricket League, will also have a fair presence of the film industry, but no big player or management names have been mentioned yet.
