MUMBAI: Indian Super League team Delhi Dynamos is set to leave the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium (JNS) in favour of a new home.

TOI can reveal that the team is in advanced talks to make the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar -which hosted the two editions of the Hero Super Cup - as their home stadium beginning from the 2019-20 season.

The JNS in Delhi has repeatedly failed to attract crowds and that's the primary reason behind the change. Despite the JNS boasting a huge 60,000 capacity, the average spectator turnout in Delhi last season was just under 9000. With such a huge stadium largely empty on match days, the owners decided it was better to move to a more compact stadium.

Venues in Hyderabad and Delhi's NCT area were being looked at but the Odisha government was very welcoming to the idea of having an ISL team playing their home games there. The stadium, which has a capacity of 15,000, has hosted ISL matches in the past when Jamshedpur FC used it as their home stadium for a match in December 2017.

"In the five years of the ISL, stadium attendance in Delhi has never improved. Apart from sponsors, a main part of a club's revenue comes from the sale of tickets. Sadly that wasn't happening in Delhi and so the owners decided that it was time to move," a source said.

Though Delhi will definitely play in Bhubaneswar next season, they are still mulling whether to play all their home games there. They have the option of playing half of their home games at the JLN Stadium.

The Odisha government has been promoting sports in a big way, even setting up high-performance centres there. Odisha recently hosted the 2018 Hockey World Cup and were also the sponsors of the Indian hockey team. As far as football is concerned, apart from the Super Cup, they also hosted the Hero Gold Cup in February. The tournament saw the national women's teams of Myanmar, Iran, Nepal and hosts India competing.

