An ambitious plan to introduce American Football to India by next year is well advanced with investment from the Indian government. The move is being headed by Hollywood film stars and prominent NFL figures, including Mike Ditka, who coached the Chicago Bears to victory in Super Bowl XX in 1986.

Those behind the Elite Football League of India, which the NFL does not have a stake in but admits it is "watching with interest", say that it aims to tap into a sizeable television audience in the world's second most populous nation.

Ditka said: "I'm involved in a project now to start a professional football league in India. A few of us are behind it and there's big money behind it and it's going to happen. There's 1.3b [actually 1.2b] people over there. They have got the money and nothing to put on TV, but cricket. The ground-work is pretty much laid out - they've got some big investors.

"If it works it's a no-brainer. You're going to have teams who will probably play all the games in one stadium. If it works, the TV [revenue potential] alone is incredible because there's nothing to put on TV. It's the most American country basically of any country out there because they copy a lot of things from us. That's something that I know is in the works."

The NFL will again host a regular season game in England this week as part of its international expansion plans. Regarding the NFL's current penetration in India a spokesperson for the NFL said: "We do not have a TV deal specifically in India. We have a pan Asia deal with ASN that goes into India, but we have no direct presence. We don't have viewing figures but they would not be significant, and we are not currently active in that market."

Other investors in the EFLI include Michael Irvin, who won three Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys and Ron Jaworski, a former Miami Dolphins and Philadelphia Eagles quarter-back. Despite having no tradition of American Football in India, Ditka is confident there will be an appetite for the sport to be played and followed there. He said: "You say: 'So where are you going to get the players?' We're going to get them from India. They had 10,000 people that signed up for it already. Ten of them might be worth a damn I don't know. It's going to be an undertaking because you're going to have to send American coaches over there and you're going to have to do a lot of things to coach their coaches. Once they get it, you're good and you go from there.

'India is no different from England: they follow football. They get it, they understand what split formations are."

Regarding the finance Ditka added: "There are US investors involved with the Indian government behind it. There's some big people on board, some big Hollywood people. If it works then I don't have to work anymore. A couple of those Hollywood guys are in it, I can't say their names, but they're movie stars. When people said football in India, I said: 'Are you crazy?' Then you start looking at the logistics - 1.3b people, we've only got 300m in this country. And the economics of the television. I understand it's only so many games a year but it ought to draw pretty good on TV. There are a few of us involved, former players."

Ditka did, though, hint that the project may not take off. "200,000 shares of nothing is nothing. 1,000 shares of something is something," he said.

Training camps were held last month with the matches currently proposed to be played in Pune in west India. Jeff Whelan, the EFLI's commissioner, who was in the country recently to promote the league, said: "Initially the plan was just to have an eight-team league but with the overwhelming response from athletes across the country for our orientation program we have decided to expand it to ten cities.

"All the players in the league will be contracted and will be paid as they will play professionally here. India has a huge pool of talent. But these athletes, be it a wrestler, judo or a kabaddi player or from the track, they train hard and excel but the reward they receive is small compared to the efforts they put in. Besides, not all of them make it big either. Here we are providing these good athletes another sport and a good career option."

"As of now it is the initial stages. We will select 40 athletes for each of the teams and they will be paid a monthly salary and we will train them and next year we will select the final players for the team and then it will be show time and India will have their own version of the 'Super Bowl'."