adidas Creators Premier League - My First Player Auction Experience

July 20, 2019

A few months ago, a close friend of mine, Hemant Sharma, mentioned the idea of the Global Institute of Sports Business buying a team in the upcoming adidas Creators Premier League (ACPL). To be honest, at the time I didn’t give it too much thought as I’ve not come across many Sports Management education institutes that have purchased and managed football clubs in city-based leagues. Then, the more we discussed this idea internally, we realized that it was brilliant – the perfect way to give some our aspiring sports club CEOs a first-hand experience of running a team.

We were clear that we wanted to purchase a team in the Women’s league vs Men’s. Mumbai happens to be the home of some incredible female footballers and we wanted to use this team to give them a platform to build their profile. We were also clear that although winning the league was a major priority, we also wanted to focus on educating our players around sports management topics as well contribute to society off the pitch. Sounds idealistic, I know, however I honestly believe that every human being wants to make a difference to others, it’s just that some people are not able to clearly see the opportunity unless it is created for them – so buying a team in the ‘creators’ league seemed like a perfect way to do this.

So exactly one month after the initial conversation with Hemant, the GISB Blue Flames was officially born.

Once you have completed the process of coming up with a hopefully not too cheesy team name and designing a cool and not copied logo, apparently the next step in owning a team in the adidas Creators Premier League is to pick your players. So my colleagues and I were invited to the Taj Lands End Hotel in Bandra, Mumbai to take part in the player auction.

Initially I saw the player auction as an opportunity to spend some quality off campus time with the rest of the GISB management and network with a few of the other team owners. Since I didn’t have much of an idea about exactly which players we should bid for, I didn’t plan to take the whole auction aspect of the event too seriously. But then upon arrival, my competitive side took over. Once I realized how serious everyone was about the auction, I got serious too. First step was to send the player list to a few of my friends who have owned or managed ACPL teams in the past so that they could tell me who we should bid for and for how much. Then I compared my notes with the notes of our coach Josh as well as our Team Manager / GISB Student Poonam.

The next 2 hours were a blur of small victories and gentle blows as we tried to fill up our 11 player roster with the best players possible. During the entire draft, I kept thinking about the NBA Draft, NFL Draft, IPL Auction and, even the, ISL Auction that used to take place. I was so anxious during the auction and we weren’t even talking about spending real money, I can’t imagine how the Owners, General Managers and Coaches feel leading up to, during and immediately after a professional draft or auction.

The rest of the evening post the auction was spent celebrating the success of GISB, bantering with the other team owners and solving all of the challenges that the Indian football industry is facing while downing multiple scotch & sodas thanks to the open bar courtesy of IT Magia and the Taj Lands End.

All in all it was a memorable evening that set the stage for what I’m sure will be an extraordinary few months of the ACPL. Thank you to IT Magia, Raanvijay Singh and everyone involved in creating and delivering this fantastic football property.