© ISLWe caught up with Jefferson Slack, Senior Vice President, Global Business Development, IMG Worldwide, towards the end of the domestic player draft of the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) in Mumbai. Some excerpts from the interview…You literally kicked off the domestic player drafts by picking up the lots to set the order in which the clubs would make their picks. How did the process finally pan out?First of all, I think it was very exciting for the young Indians who were selected for the new league. Because that’s what it was all about, young Indians getting a chance to play top quality football with top international marquee players, good coaches, good facilities, lots of television exposure, all that will be aspirational for young kids.Secondly, it is great to see the clubs which have just been formed recently, coming here with their team of people and making their selection of the players, it’s a physical reminder of how exciting this league is.The third part is I hope that people have thought this was well organised. It is part of our goal to bring to India professional standards of organisation and management of football. I really believe that Indians love football and want to see good quality football domestically in their country.Do you think from the Indian players’ perspective, the teams are well balanced to make the matches competitive? Until we see the international players, it will be hard to make that comment, but the way the draft was conducted, we hope we’ve given the clubs a level playing field, so it depends upon how good they are at selecting and managing the players. My guess is that the teams will be fairly competitive.Will the foreign players playing in the ISL be substantially superior to those already playing in India like Ranti Martins, Odafa Okolie, Beto etc?You might be aware we have two types of international players, the icon players and the others. We have to do a great job of bringing foreign players, the key to bringing greater quality to the ISL. We have a big advantage in that we are sourcing 40-50 players, so we’ve got the advantage of the economies of scale. We have the ability from the scouting standpoint and a good organization in place, our people are talking to a bunch of Brazilian players, we are sourcing from among the best players in the world. We have an advantage over a club that needs to get one or two players. So that is something that we will have to deliver on and we feel very comfortable about that. So each team will have seven or eight of those guys, including the marquee player, and the quality and the quantity will be much more than what you’ve seen in India."Our objective is to make it innovative and exciting, we are not ruling anything out, we are keen on maintaining the tradition of what football is, but we’re also planning to be innovative, especially with the social media and the things that can be done for now, we do want to be on the cutting edge with that."Jeffferson Slack, Senior Vice President, IMG WorldwideIMG was involved with conceptualizing and executing the IPL. What were the takeaways from that experience?Personally, I was never directly involved with that and I don’t know much about cricket that I would ever pretend (to know), especially with Indian audiences who know everything about cricket. So I apologize to the fans for the lack of knowledge of the sport. But I think there were a lot of lessons we learnt from the IPL. The first lesson -- the Indian fan likes this kind of format of eight teams that we initially had in the IPL, a kind of short tournament, very well marketed, great entertainment, underlying the premise that Indian consumers perhaps want to be entertained.Cricket showed a new format that was good, that could attract a lot more young people, I think the IPL was a great trailblazer for us, I don’t think we’d be sitting here today if it wasn’t for the IPL, so I’m very thankful that they did that. We do hope that football can learn some lessons from the IPL.Will there be innovations in the conduct or coverage of the ISL that have not been seen in Indian football before?We are first starting with production values and are spending a huge amount of money on production. I won’t say it’s going to be of English Premier League quality, but it’s going to be really close. In addition, because we have a broadcasting partner in Star who are also our joint venture partners, they are going to put all their resources and expertise behind the coverage. I think you are going to see the best production values you’ve ever seen coming out of football matches played in India.There may be some innovations in the games to make it more exciting, so maybe after 90 minutes you go straight to penalties if there are draws, things which football fans might just enjoy. It may make sense to do things like mike-ing the managers, it’s nice when you’re having a new league when you have to be entertaining. Our objective is to make it innovative and exciting, we are not ruling anything out, we are keen on maintaining the tradition of what football is, but we’re also planning to be innovative, especially with the social media and the things that can be done for now, we do want to be on the cutting edge with that.Do you forsee an expansion of the ISL in terms of number of teams and the duration of the tournament?We’re singularly focussed on making this first year successful, if we don’t do that, don’t talk about anything in the future, if people see something exciting and enjoyable, or say ‘that was really enjoyable” or ‘I want to watch the matches’, then, we’ve done our job. We’ll take stock after that, clearly, there’s that possibility.With a couple of I-League clubs investing in clubs and some having technical tie-ups with the ISL clubs or loaning their players, do you think these two entities will eventually merge in the long run?We’ll see. There are owners who have invested a lot of money in Indian football and the I-League and we have to respect that. They also know how football works in India and there are new organisations that are being created so I think it is a good sign that the clubs are working together with the I-League clubs. We’re talking about a lot of people that have good experience in Indian football and it’s a good sign that they’re coming together.
