PoV #32: Inside the Making of Bengaluru FC

Inside the Making of India’s BENGALURU FC: The Inner Workings of Indian Football’s Most Successful Club Over The Last 12 Years (On The Pitch & Outside Of It)

What does it take to make people care about a sport that was never on most people’s minds? A sport that became the foreground of a city’s life?

The answer is not just in the wins, money, or the players.

In a cricket-first country, building a football club is a cultural challenge more than being a sporting challenge. Before trophies come belief. Before belief comes story. And before story comes a careful, often invisible, act of building trust, identity, and community.

This Pint of View lecture goes inside the making of Bengaluru FC, tracing how content, storytelling, and culture helped build not just a team, but one of Indian sport’s most passionate fanbases. It is a story of what happens off the pitch long before results start showing on it.

Drawing from the club’s twelve-year journey, the talk follows decisions that rarely make headlines: how a brand voice was shaped, how fans were treated as stakeholders rather than consumers, how community preceded scale, and how belief was built season by season, sometimes in spite of results.

Along the way, we meet a cast rarely framed as protagonists in Indian sport: footballers not picked by other clubs, first-time fans, staff working in obscurity, and people building culture without precedent. Together, they script one of Indian football’s most improbable fairytales.

This is not just a talk about football.

It’s about how meaning is manufactured, how loyalty is earned, and how love for a club (better still a culture) is built from scratch.

Who Must Attend?

ISL football fans, people curious about how clubs become communities and teams become symbols, and anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes stories Kunaal hasn’t shared publicly before.

Speaker

Kunaal Majgaonkar spent twelve years as Head of Content and Media at JSW Sports, where he played a central role in building some of Indian sport’s most recognisable modern brands. Between 2013 and 2025, he led content, communications, and fan-base building for Bengaluru FC, the Inspire Institute of Sport, Haryana Steelers, and Soorma Hockey Club, often from the ground up.

He worked closely with Sunil Chhetri and Neeraj Chopra on shaping content and public narratives that allowed Indian sport to be seen and felt beyond match day results.

Before this, Kunaal was a Senior Sports Correspondent with The Times of India from 2005 to 2013. During this time, he reported extensively from the grassroots and specialised in football, developing a deep understanding of how sport lives in everyday communities across the country.

Kunaal recently started a small community called Pitchside Recos, a space where he recommends some of the best writing on sport.

Event details

Date: Sunday, 25 January 2026

Time: 12 PM – 2 PM

Venue: Fandom at Gilly’s Redefined, Koramangala

See you there over drinks (sober or beer) 🍺