"I don't believe we're ever going away. And that's sincere." - Interview with Richard Whelan, CEO EFLI

Now this is quite a contradiction, but this form of football is built around one or two star players on each team, even though it is a collective effort. If I had to ask you to name you two or three potential stars who could take EFLI into Indian homes in the next few years, including the Sri Lankan and Pakistan teams, who would it be?

Preetesh Balyaya, of the Mumbai Gladiators, is just an absolute superstar; both verbally, his heart and soul and his play, he is just a very dedicated warrior. He’s somebody who if I was a little boy I would look up to. He stands for everything the EFLI stands for, peace in his heart.

Preetesh Balyaya of the Mumbai Gladiators

You also have Dinesh Kumar, who was the Quarter Back for the Pune Marathas. He lives in Chennai, and he’ll probably play for the Chennai Swarm which is an expansion team. He was just a great leader, very humble and just an outstanding leader. He plays Quarter Back, which is one of the toughest positions. He can run, he can throw, he makes good decisions, he is just an all round star.

And the third person is the gentleman they call ‘Happy’; he is on the Delhi Defenders team and he’s been with us from day one. He is a star in every regard, he is a great leader, very humble, everyone looks up to him. He is a brilliant shining star, little kids just love him. The Delhi team made the final last year, they play very rough, and he really is their leader.

These three are the names that come up in my mind. And of course, there’s the MVP as well, Roshan Lobo.

How do you manage a team around stars like this? Especially in American football, where the effort is collective, but the glory is often ascribed to an individual, the quarter back. What are the challenges in getting the other members to rally around the star player?

That’s actually interesting! I’ve often wondered the same in America; if you’re an Offensive Lineman for example, they don’t even keep stats. Every position has statistics, but an Offensive Lineman doesn’t. And which is surprising because he does a lot of the work, without the help of the Offensive Lineman the Quarter Back doesn’t shine. Those are the boys who for some reason just love being a part of a winning team and they adore the star and they want their team to have a star because he’s going to win the game for them.

The stars, in fact, often let their Offensive Linemen know how much they appreciate their work, because it truly is a team effort. You have 11 different players, taking turns on offense and defense, that’s 22 different players and different kickers. So it really takes a team to win.

So each individual hopes there’s a star; they want two stars, three stars to help the team win. So, it’s never a problem, in fact they just love them. They love the other guy being the star that’s going to help them win the game. That’s what the game is about.

From your experiences so far, how happy are you with the money that has come in from local Indian investors to help the league sustain itself through the first few seasons?

I am ecstatic about where we are from a business front because we really have stabilized the league by bringing in owners. The league owns half the teams, the rest have owners. We’re also into expansion now with 16 teams being lined up with many of them ready to go in a really short time too, ranging from anywhere between 6 months to 18 months. Some of them might even be ready as early as 3 months. The more cities we go into, the more exposure we have, possible TV markets, universities, high schools – all these then trickle down into retail.

So I’m very happy about the stabilization of the league to the point of fully ensuring longevity. I don’t believe we’re ever going away, in like forever. And that’s sincere.

As far as Indians investing or sponsors, we never made a push for sponsorship because it would be premature. It would be bad enough to ask people to sponsor us over something that they didn’t know about. Now, for the first time tonight, we have the product on display here in India and with the connectivity established with the universities and colleges, we now have a package that has meaning – real meaning and real value for the sponsors.

I guess time will tell, but I do know that, without exaggeration, there are hundreds of smaller sponsors who are interested in sponsoring us. We’ve stayed away from that until now because we have not made any effort so far. We will be starting off soon though, and I think that the sponsors will get immense value with the TV exposure and the universities and colleges coming in. And the returns I think will be really good.

Two other things I wanted to touch upon, specific to the Indian context. The first – I know that you have already tied up with 12 universities, promoting the sport, introducing it to kids. So when you go to these universities, what is that you see happening? There’s excitement when an event happens and then the enthusiasm begins to wane quickly. How do you manage to sustain interest?

I’ve actually discussed that with the heads of the universities. We have 12 universities at the moment, 14 in total with 12 officially signed, with many more in the pipeline. But universally, through the biggest and best universities in India, they all agree on what you just said that once the events are done, its over.

But then its not done and over, that’s not acceptable. The reason why they are so transient and tend to dissipate is because there is no record keeping, no statistics and no TV coverage. Therefore by definition, they aren’t chronicled, there’s no record kept and no records to beat in future, no heroes created, there’s nothing to look forward to in future. It’s just an event and it’s over.

We’re going to do more than events. We don’t do events. We’re going to be doing all of those things that I mentioned. We are going to bring statistics so that people know who the best Quarter Back is, who the best Running Back is.