AIFF’s 29-page financial report exposes the chaos behind Indian football

It is 29 pages long, covers the financial year ending March 31, 2025, and has been largely ignored since it was published. Inside it is a story about a governing body that spent years feeding the courts while starving the game. And about a sealed envelope sitting in the Supreme Court of India that nobody — not the auditors, not the federation, not you — is allowed to open.

In Numbers: The AIFF Audit and ISL Relation

Reviewing the AIFF’s FY 2024-25 audit report, we found the federation spent a significant amount on legal expenses and fees. Total income for FY25 was ₹101.24 crore (down from ₹110.44 crore in FY24), with the largest contributors being the sale of telecasting/master rights at ₹50 crore and football assessment programme fees of ₹18.81 crore.

The total expenditure for the year stood at ₹82.79 crore, resulting in a surplus of ₹18.45 crore. The largest share of spending went towards tournament, camps and other football-related expenses, amounting to ₹71.40 crore. This covered the I-League, Women’s League, National Championships, international camps, as well as coach and referee development programmes. Administrative and other expenses totaled ₹8.21 crore, including professional fees of ₹3.85 crore, legal expenses of ₹99 lakh and security and housekeeping costs of ₹51 lakh.

Employee benefits expenses declined sharply to ₹2.69 crore from ₹5.77 crore in FY24. Meanwhile, coaches’ remuneration totalled ₹7.47 crore, with chief coach fees accounting for the largest portion at ₹4.28 crore.

AIFF struggling on other fronts

The AIFF put out a formal tender for a new commercial partner. Not a single bid came in. They extended the deadline. Still nothing. An organisation sitting on Rs 82 crore in funds could not find one partner willing to bet on its own product.

When the season finally limped into existence in February 2026, the total budget for the entire Indian Super League was Rs 24.26 crore. Each club was asked to contribute Rs 1 crore just to participate. The same federation that spent Rs 1 crore on legal fees in a single year was now asking the clubs it had failed to bail out the league it had broken.

Bengaluru FC owner Parth Jindal said publicly what many were thinking privately: “Football has been a loss-making proposition for all since I can remember.”

The League That Nearly Died

Cut to the summer of 2025. In Bengaluru, a footballer who has spent a decade building a career in the ISL reads a message from his club. Salary cuts of up to 25 percent. Take it or leave it. The league may not even happen this season.

He is not alone. Odisha FC suspended player contracts entirely. Bengaluru FC withheld salaries for its whole first team. Following this, global players’ union FIFPRO issued an emergency statement saying players had been forced to rely on personal savings, take short-term contracts in state leagues, or seek entirely different employment simply to support themselves and their families.

The reason was a Supreme Court order from April 2025 barring the AIFF from renewing its commercial agreement with FSDL — the entity pumping over Rs 60 crore a year into running the ISL — until the court ruled on a constitutional dispute dragging since 2017. The same dispute. The same legal black hole swallowing time, money, and energy since before half these players signed their first professional contracts.

The Envelope Nobody Can Open

Somewhere between April 2017 and May 2022, something was happening inside the AIFF’s accounts. The Committee of Administrators, appointed by the Supreme Court on May 18, 2022 after the federation’s governance collapsed, thought it serious enough to bring in Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP.

Deloitte went through the books. Deloitte wrote a report. That report was placed in a sealed envelope and submitted to the Supreme Court. It has not been opened since.

The AIFF has formally asked for a copy. The court has not said yes. So today, the people running Indian football do not know what Deloitte found in Indian football’s own accounts. Their statutory auditors wrote plainly in the FY 2024-25 report: “Pending outcome of the forensic audit initiated by the CoA, we are unable to determine the potential impact and any further adjustments that may be necessary to these financial statements.”

Every number in the AIFF balance sheet sits under that sentence like a question mark. The envelope is still sealed.

The Reckoning

Meanwhile, the Indian Super League nearly collapsed. Players went unpaid. Commercial partners walked away. The national team failed to qualify for the Asian Cup. And the federation whose books are in that envelope published accounts its own auditors could not fully verify.

The Rs 1 crore in legal fees is not a scandal. The scandal is what it represents — eight years of an institution so consumed by its own survival in court that it forgot what it was supposed to be surviving for.

The envelope is still sealed.

TIMELINE: Eight Years That Broke Indian Football