The hugely successful Indian Super League's reputation just grows as Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg mentioned about the two-year-old football tournament as one of the key world events discussed by the people on the social networking site last year.
The ISL found a passing mention as one of the world's leading celebration of happy moments last year in Zuckerberg's announcement of Facebook's quarterly results. He shared an update on the community's progress to connect the world.
"In 2015 people came together in many different ways on Facebook. We celebrated happy moments, from the Indian Super League to the release of Star Wars," Zuckerberg stated.
"Millions of people rallied to support Nepal after the earthquake, France after the Paris attacks and all those affected by the refugee crisis. And every day, hundreds of millions of people just used Facebook to connect with loved ones," he added.
Zuckerberg said the community now has more than 1.59 billion people.
"More than 1 billion people use Groups. Almost 1 billion people use WhatsApp. More than 19 million people who previously had no internet access are now connected through Internet.Org.
"Thank you for being a part of our community, and for helping to connect the world."
In its second year, the ISL has achieved the feat of climbing to number three position among world football leagues ahead of Spain's La Liga (No.4), in terms of average match attendance.
It is still behind Bundesliga (No.1) and Premier League (No.2). For the inaugural year, ISL was ranked fourth largest football league in the world with an average attendance of 24,371. In its second season (2015), the average attendance for 61 matches was recorded at 27,090.
Similarly, ISL is ranked No. 8 among the top ten sport leagues in average attendance.
On digital platform, ISL 2015 witnessed strong growth in fan base. The official ISL page on Facebook saw a growth of about 1 million fans strengthening overall reach to 2.7 million fan base.
