The ongoing season of the Indian Super League (ISL) has witnessed significant involvement of transfer fees as the clubs have spent a sum of Rs 9.5 crore on buying new players. The amount is reportedly six times more than the previous season.
So far, the procedure in Indian football was to sign both domestic and foreign players on free transfers, which means clubs usually avoided paying transfer fees to other clubs.
However, in the ongoing 2020-21 season, the ISL clubs have spent Rs 9.5 crore as compared to last season’s Rs 1.4 crore.
An other significant change witnessed this season was in release clause. Significantly, City Football Group-backed Mumbai City FC paid Rs 1.6 crore according to the release clause of ISL 2019-20 Golden Ball winner Hugo Boumous to secure his services from FC Goa.
The general practice for ISL clubs to pay transfer fees to I-League clubs for promising domestic players continued this season also. The most significant transfer this season was when Bengaluru FC paid Rs 40 lakh to Chennai City FC to rope in fullback Ajith Kumar.
The league’s growing popularity can also be seen from the fact the ISL clubs even paid transfer fees and loan fees to foreign clubs to sign some quality foreigners.