The fourth season of Hero Indian Super League got off to a flying start with the match between last year’s defending champions ATK and runner-up Kerala Blasters FC. The opening game of this year saw 100% stadia attendance in Kochi and was watched on TV from people all across India. As per the data revealed provided by Star Sports, the match between Kerala Blasters FC and ATK got 25 million total TV impressions and registered an impressive 59% growth over last season’s opening game. The opening game of Hero Indian Super League Season 4 recorded 7.4 million average impressions which are actually, double than India vs USA game at Under-17 FIFA World Cup 2017.

Sanjay Gupta, MD, Star India is thrilled with this massive growth and believes that this could be the biggest ever season of the Indian Super League. “We are thrilled with the response that The Hero Indian Super League is getting from football fans across India. The growth demonstrated is across urban, rural and digital audiences which indeed proves that Future Hai Football! We are looking forward to having an exhilarating journey on this biggest ever season of the league,” he said.

Unlike the previous three seasons, this year the Indian Super League will be played across 17 weeks instead of 12, along with the addition of 2 new teams – Bengaluru F.C. and Jamshedpur F.C. This has added more thrill to the league. We have already seen the first look of all the sides and indeed, the season promises to be bigger and better than ever before, with more audiences expected to tune-in to catch their favourite clubs take on each other in action-packed matches.

The team managements too, have focused on utility players rather than big names. Despite that, Robbie Keane of ATK and Dimitar Berbatov of Kerala Blasters are likely to attract the viewers along with FC Pune City’s Marcelino who was last year’s leading run-scorer.

The new season began on 17 November and a total of 95 matches will be played in the 2017-18 season between 10 teams including two additional teams – Bengaluru FC and Jamshedpur FC. Each out of 10 teams will play in a home-and-away format in 90 games. The two-legged semi-finals of the ISL league are scheduled to take place in the second week of March 2018.