NEW DELHI: For the overwhelming majority of football enthusiasts in India, the Indian Super League (ISL) is their first encounter with a domestic tournament where the quality of play at times approximates international standards.Three weeks after its launch, ISL is very much work in progress. The debutante league scored on debut with its opening match garnering impressive numbers.ISL's first match was seen by 74.7 million viewers on October 12, a rating of 1.81, considered by experts to be a decent number in a country where football does not enjoy high popularity barring a few states.In comparison, the first match of the Pro Kabbadi League (PKL), widely considered to be a success, was seen by 66 million. For perspective, the inaugural match of the 2008 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the first year of the Twenty20 cricket tournament, was viewed by 195 million people.Since then, the Indian edition of the beautiful game has struggled to pull in the numbers despite the presence of football legends such as Alessandro Del Piero (formerly, Italy and Juventus) who plays for Delhi Dynamos and Luis Garcia (Spain, Liverpool and now Atletico de Kolkata).From the TAM (Television Audience Measurement) peak of 1.81 in the inaugural match, the figure at the end of the first week had reached 0.54, averaging a TAM rating of 0.87. By week 2 of ISL, this had further slipped to 0.7.ISL's official spokesperson said that over 200 million people have seen the league so far. "In the opening week, 170 million viewers watched Hero ISL. In week 2, another 60 million viewers have sampled the league, taking the extrapolated reach to 232 million, which is a 35% increase from week 1.""The ratings for week 2 have been 90% of week 1 ratings (removing for the opening night impact) which is on anticipated lines keeping in mind natural viewership patterns across leagues, breaks in schedule and Diwali week. Further, viewership on starsports.com showed a growth of 50% in week 2 growing to 8.5 million digital views," the spokesperson added. A viewership of 170 million means that so many people watched the opening match for at least a minute."The viewership numbers have surpassed those of other football leagues, including foreign ones, in India," says Gaurav Modwel, CEO of Pune FC. "It is healthy for Year One and the numbers will only go up."The promoters of ISL, a joint venture between Reliance Industries and IMG, have set themselves the ambitious goal of raising the standards of Indian football so that the nation of 1.2 billion has a good enough team to qualify for the 2026 World Cup. India's current world ranking is a miserable 159. The current edition of ISL will run till December.Outside the traditional footballing boroughs of the North-East, Kolkata, Goa and Kerala, stadium attendances too have not been impressive since the league kicked off with a bang on October 12. The highest attendance till date has been 65,000 in the inaugural match between Atletico de Kolkata and Mumbai City FC in Kolkata; the lowest 7,517 in the Pune City-Goa match on October 26 in Pune, with stadium attendances averaging around 25,000 in the first two weeks.The ISL spokesperson said attendance has been higher than in football leagues in Asian countries such as South Korea and China."All across India, fans have come out in big support for football and Hero ISL. Average stadia attendance for first two weeks was 25,000 and this is higher than 2014 season average attendance of A-league (13,000), J-league (17,000), MLS (19,000), K-league (8,000) and Chinese Super League (19,000)," the spokesperson said.Kabaddi on PKL had surprisingly captured both mindspace as well as viewers, 435 million of them through the five weeks the tournament was on from July 26 to August 31.In contrast, ISL has garnered 170 million-odd viewers in its first week with average time spent by the viewer being 9-10 seconds.(The viewer spent about 3.1 minutes watching the 2014 edition of Indian Premier League.) Officials associated with ISL say professional domestic football leagues were, for all intent and purposes, invisible before October 12."It (the ratings) may be low. But before October 12, there was no rating for Indian football. This is a good start," says Vinit Karnik, national director, entertainment, sports & live events, GroupM ESP, a media investment company.What is going for ISL is the combined might of the Star television network, Reliance and global sports media giant IMG behind the league. Sponsors such as Hero, Maruti, Samsung, Pepsi, Puma, Nise Gel and Muthoot Group are on board, bringing in on-air plus ground revenues of around Rs 65 crore to the franchise. With more investment and better players drawn to the league, ISL could find firmer ground to stand on.ISL will have to ward off the threat of a 'Season 2 trap' that befell Formula 1 and the Indian Hockey League. Franchise partners will need to invest heavily in the first 3-5 years just to keep the momentum going and for ISL to hold its own against kabaddi, never mind cricket."There are no ISL heroes so far. I think some names will come up over the next few years that Indian fans can look up to and follow. That's how loyalty will develop," says Karnik. Modwel agrees about the brand-building process. "The emergence of a local hero is very important", adding that "the overall league will take at least three years to settle down".Some niggling issues have already been identified — one being the timing of the matches. The 7 pm slot for weekdays was decided upon primarily to counter 'competition' from international football telecasts that start after 9 pm.There has been a considerable decline in repeat viewership, TAM figures show 22 million repeat viewers in week 2 (38% of the first week), which is lower than Pro Kabbadi League's repeat viewership figure of 25 million. "We will discuss the 7 pm timing at the end of the tournament. We thought it would be good for people in the stadiums as the matches would end early. Also, the broadcaster has to manage clashes with other channels," says Modwel.These are indeed early days. But for the league not to be still-born, it has to get its act together now. ISL insists that "our vision is beyond the league per se — about building a pipeline of footballing talent for the future" through its grassroots programme and "other club-specific initiatives"."I always had a picture in my head of how it (would) be in 3 seconds or 2 seconds," said Dutch and Arsenal footballing great Denis Bergkamp. For ISL to survive, its architects have to fix many things so that they know in their collective head how it will be in 3-4 years.