With help from West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, East Bengal landed an investor thereby removing the biggest hurdle in the 100-year-old club’s path to play in the Indian Super League (ISL), India’s top football league. ISL is expected to start in November behind closed-doors in Goa.
The process of bidding to play in ISL 7 hasn’t happened but that is likely to be a formality now that Shree Cement, among the top three cement manufacturing companies in India with a net profit of Rs 9597 crore in 2018-19, has come on board. Including franchisee fees, Rs 30 crore is a ball park figure needed to play in ISL and this listed company headquartered in Kolkata will help finance that project.
Shree Cement is owned by the Bangur family and chairman Benu Gopal Bangur’s net worth is around $645 crore. Bangur is 330th in the world billionaires’ list according to Bloomberg Index. Forbes ranked Bangur the 19th richest Indian in 2019. Bangur’s son Hari Mohan is the managing director and grandson Prashant is joint-managing director.
“In their 100th year, East Bengal were nearly deprived of playing in ISL. Mohun Bagan had signed an agreement (to play in ISL) earlier but there was a lot of uncertainty over East Bengal. It was not desirable that millions of their supporters would be deprived….I am happy that Shree Cement has come forward to make East Bengal self-sufficient… especially in the time of a pandemic. I have also spoken to All India Football federation president Praful Patel about this (East Bengal playing ISL). Our endeavour always has been to do what is best for Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting,” said Banerjee at the media conference called by East Bengal at Nabanna, the state headquarters, on Wednesday.
{{/usCountry}}“In their 100th year, East Bengal were nearly deprived of playing in ISL. Mohun Bagan had signed an agreement (to play in ISL) earlier but there was a lot of uncertainty over East Bengal. It was not desirable that millions of their supporters would be deprived….I am happy that Shree Cement has come forward to make East Bengal self-sufficient… especially in the time of a pandemic. I have also spoken to All India Football federation president Praful Patel about this (East Bengal playing ISL). Our endeavour always has been to do what is best for Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting,” said Banerjee at the media conference called by East Bengal at Nabanna, the state headquarters, on Wednesday.
{{/usCountry}}“East Bengal will appeal to play in the ISL this season. Yesterday, we had had a meeting (with the investor). Not all the issues could be cleared. But today, Didi (Mamata Banerjee) intervened and cleared all the bottlenecks,” said Debabrata Sarkar, East Bengal executive committee member.
Since the split with Quess Corps earlier this year, East Bengal have been seeking investors. With time running out, club officials have been feeling the heat from supporters. “After Mohun Bagan joined ISL, I got a call from Didi asking ‘what about your team’. She then said, ‘keep looking, I will help if I can,” said Sarkar.