The organizer of the Indonesia Super League, PT Liga Indonesia, and its commercial partner BVSports announced a change in the league's official name to the Qatar National Bank League "just a day prior to the kick off of the delayed" football tournament, according to the JAKARTA POST. PT Liga Indonesia announced on Friday that the QNB Group had "obtained exclusive title partner rights" for Indonesia's senior football competition from '15 until the end of '17. PT Liga Indonesia Corp. Secretary Tigorshalom Boboy said, "We are still using the ISL internally, but commercially the tournament's name has been changed to the QNB League. It's just like the English Premier League, which is now changed to the Barclays Premier League due to the bank's sponsorship." He added that it was not their intention to make the announcement so peremptorily. Boboy: "It just happened that we signed the agreement on Thursday before we made the joint announcement on Friday." He "declined to reveal the value of the deal," saying only that BVSports was "in charge of all the commercial rights regarding the ISL." Oil-rich Qatar has been "aggressively investing" in int'l sports in the last few years. After completing a buyout of Ligue 1 side Paris St. Germain in '12, Qatar also donated $4.6M to two Israeli Premier League sides, Bnei Sakhnin and Maccabi Ahi Nazareth (JAKARTA POST, 4/5).
