A cricket team and a football team sharing partly the same name isn’t that common in the sporting fraternity, but that has changed after Sanjeev Goenka’s announcement post the Indian Super League (ISL) final.
Goenka, owner of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group (RPSG) has two major investments in sports at the moment. In football, it is ATK Mohun Bagan, and in cricket, it is the Lucknow Super Giants, a team in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
As per Goenka’s recent announcement, ATK Mohun Bagan will be renamed the Mohun Bagan Super Giants from the next season. Therefore, the football club will partly share its name with the Lucknow Super Giants.
The RPSG group shelled out a staggering amount of INR 7000 crores to invest in the Lucknow Super Giants when the BCCI opened bids for new teams in 2021.
Why the name change?
Mohun Bagan merged with the Sanjeev Goenka-owned ATK ahead of the 2020-21 season. After the merger, the Mohun Bagan football team made its debut in the ISL and was officially named ‘ATK Mohun Bagan’.
While the club logo and iconic colours of Green and Maroon were left untouched, there were protests from large sections of the Mohun Bagan fanbase, demanding Goenka remove the term ‘ATK’ from the club’s name, because fans thought adding the name of an erstwhile football club to Mohun Bagan was an insult to the sentiments of the fans and tarnished the club’s legacy.
After a prolonged protest, Goenka finally announced that ATK Mohun Bagan will be known as the Mohun Bagan Super Giants from the 2023-24 season.
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