Indonesian Football Gets Backing From Homegrown Unicorn Start-Ups

The eighteen-team Liga 1 kicked off last Saturday, replacing the Indonesian Super League which was halted in 2015 due to a row between the country’s sports ministry and football association.

The 2015 collapse was a sad affair caused by amateurishness, alleged corruption, self-importance and government interference. The domino effect began with a dispute between two sporting bodies – at a league level over a pair of competing clubs displaying financial irregularities – which meant the Indonesian Government had to step in to mediate, which led to FIFA banning Indonesia from international competition, enforcing their no-nonsense rules relating to governments meddling in the sport.

The ban was lifted in 2016 after a year when the government and the association finally resolved their differences, and football in Indonesia has since been slowly getting back onto its feet.

Putting politics to one side, the interesting commercial angle here is that the league has been sponsored by two pureplay tech firms: travel, logistics and payment platform Go-Jek, and travel website Traveloka.

Go-Jek – with a valuation of US$4b – has outfoxed the likes of Grab and Uber in Indonesia’s vibrant mobile transport market, and is even planning to expand across other emerging ASEAN nations. Last year it raised US$550m, but it has been quiet in the Sponsorship space… until now. While it scored a smaller collaboration with One Championship for its Jakarta event earlier this year, this title rights deal with Liga 1 conceals bigger ambitions.

As for Traveloka, this is the company’s first major investment in sports sponsorship, but it has plenty of capital and this deal could open the door to more on its home turf and in SEA. The platform is backed by Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital plus other investors and is reportedly worth north of US$1 billion. The startup also became known last year as the local ecommerce player with the fastest growing advertising expenses according to Nielsen.

The new league will run until November.