When the Indian Super League was founded in 2013, the city of Chennai was one of the nine proposed cities up for franchise bidding. However, on 11 April 2014 it was reported that Chennai's main bidder, a consortium led by Sunil Gavaskar would drop out due to commitments with the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Then, in August 2014, with two months before the 2014 ISL season, the Bangalore o
wners Sun Group dropped out due to disputes with the organizers. Initially reports came out that the ISL organizers were looking for bidders for new owners for the Bangalore franchise before it was revealed that Ronnie Screwvala and actor Abhishek Bachchan would together bid for a Chennai team instead of a Bangalore franchise. Then, on 14 August 2014, it was reported that ISL officials were inspecting the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Chennai for the proposed team. On 21 August 2014, for the ISL international player draft Prashant Agarwal CEO of Kshatriya Sports and Playon Skills, who is an Indian origin football expert based in London, UK and has a technical tie-up with Italian club Inter Milan represented the Team Chennai. Prashant Agarwal & his team picked the ex-PSG star Bernard Mendy, Cristian Hidalgo, Gennaro Bracigliano, Bojan Djordjic, Eduardo Silva Lerma, Bruno Pelissari and Jairo Suárez as their 7 international players, which were great picks by Team Chennai for just INR 2.34 Crore for all 7 players at average value of INR 33.43 Lakhs per player.