NEW DELHI: JSW Sports , owners of I-League football champions Bangalore FC, is close to picking up a 25 per cent stake in the Sun Group-owned Bangalore Titans team in the Indian Super League football tournament for an undisclosed amount, two people with knowledge of the development said.In the second year of the tournament, JSW's stake in the team is likely to go up further, to around 50 per cent, one of the people said. "JSW Sports was interested in bidding for the Bangalore franchise but was not able to when the bidding happened," he said, asking not to be named.Teams in the ISL, promoted by Mukesh Ambani and Rupert Murdoch, had a base price ofRs 120 crore for a 10-year contract and most buyers paid betweenRs 150 crore andRs 190 crore for the franchises. According to a source, Sun paid around Rs 150 crore for the Bangalore team.JSW Sports, which is a subsidiary of JSW Holdings that owns a considerable stake in JSW Steel , ventured into football when it bagged the Bangalore franchise in the domestic I-League last year. The team, which has top players such as Sunil Chhetri and Robin Singh, won the ILeague in 2013.Parth Jindal, son of JSW Group chairman Sajjan Jindal, who is spearheading the group's sports venture, confirmed that the company is buying a stake in the Bangalore ISL franchise, but declined to comment on financial details of the transaction. "We have agreed on the number," he told ET.The Sun Group did not respond to an email seeking comment. The deal will have to be approved by the ISL. The Kalanithi Maran-controlled Sun Group owns the Sun TV Network and low-cost airline SpiceJet. While Sun has the experience of running the Hyderabad cricket team in the Indian Premier League, this is the first time it is entering football.A partnership with JSW Sports that has experience with football, a lot of young talent and an established grassroots development programme will help the team in the new football league that will be played between September and December this year. Two other owners of I-League teams — Shillong Lajong and Dempo Sports Club — also picked up ISL teams and were allowed to use their I-League players in the ISL too.In a similar fashion, players from the Bangalore I-League team will play for Bangalore Titans, but only from year two as the deadline for such an arrangement for the inaugural edition has passed.JSW had announced last month that it has formed a technical tie-up with Sun Group's Bangalore team for the first year and will get involved with the team in a better way next year.The first edition of the IPLstyle football league, which is a three-way joint venture between IMG, Reliance Industries and Star India, has eight city-based teams — Bangalore, Delhi, Goa, Guwahati, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune — that are owned by celebrities and top businessmen who include Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, John Abraham, PVP Ventures, Harshavardhan Neotia, Sanjeev Goenka, Spanish football club Atletico Madrid and Venugopal Dhoot.In cricket-crazy India, football viewership is on an ascendance. In 2011, there were 83 million TV viewers for football in India, compared with 122 million for cricket. Between 2005 and 2009, the audience for football in India rose 60 per cent, according to TAM Media Research. A big chunk of this football viewership is for European leagues.