For decades, it wasn’t sponsorships or television deals that kept grassroots football alive in Goa — it was something far more humble: a game of housie. Played under open skies with small tickets, its thrill echoed across inter-village tournaments, drawing in crowds and cash in equal measure.
But that lifeline is now under threat.
South Goa District Collector Egna Cleetus’s clampdown on housie has plunged the state’s local football ecosystem into turmoil. What was once a joyous community affair, half game, half fundraiser now stands outlawed under the guise of anti-gambling efforts.
And just like that, a crucial financial artery of Goan football has been abruptly cut off.
“If housie is banned then the club is finished. There will be no more inter-village tournaments,” says Romeo Gomes of Navelim VU, who organizes the storied United Trophy. “You don’t get sponsors like we used to earlier.”
That dry sponsor pipeline isn’t just anecdotal. Goa is home to nearly 200 registered football clubs, but only a handful are backed by corporate houses.
The rest are village-run outfits, battling both for trophies and survival. The state’s premier Goa Professional League features 14 teams, yet even the best among them find it hard to land sustained financial support. The situation has worsened since the mining ban, which dried up a once-reliable stream of patronage from local mining companies and their benefactors.
It’s in this financial vacuum that housie became a saviour.
While raffles and tiatrs added cultural colour to local events to raise funds, it was housie that drew the crowds and the funds for the tournaments. During halftime, at inter-village tournaments across South Goa, the game became the centrepiece. A simple `20 ticket could offer a shot at a `2,000 prize on a matchday. Come finals, the pot would swell to lakhs, electrifying the atmosphere and allowing organizers to fund everything from tournament logistics to youth teams.
At the GFDC Summit, it was learnt that Custodio Memorial collected `4–5 lakhs on the final day, while the revered Chandor Seamen’s Trophy generated `3–4 lakhs in just one evening. These were not windfalls, but were lifeblood.
“Housie is the financial backbone for organizing any inter-village or other local tournaments,” says Oden Dacosta of Sirlim SC. “Our expenses often don’t get covered otherwise. The income generated from housie would help us break even, and whatever surplus we had was used for youth development programs — be it summer camps, U-17 or U-15 teams.”
His words slice to the heart of the issue: this is no longer about entertainment or nostalgia. It’s about the future of football in a state that lives and breathes the sport.
“We also participate in U-13 GFA tournaments,” Dacosta continues. “The revenue earned through housie at our inter-village events goes directly towards supporting the kids. It’s from these platforms that talent gets spotted, picked up by bigger clubs, and promoted to higher divisions like the Goa Professional League.”
“If they really wanted to stop housie, they should have targeted the ones held at musical shows, which have a much larger prize pool and higher ticket prices,” says Aluizio Fernandes of Navelim Sporting. “Those housies mint money in lakhs, whereas the ones at inter-village tournaments are much smaller.”
Even if the ban was meant for them, such shows and events have multiple sponsors, and will survive, one way or another. But without housie, village football has no other support.
But perhaps what’s most galling to South Goa’s football community is the double standard. While modest housie games are being outlawed in the name of regulation, the state continues to court casino revenue — the very industry that has transformed the Mandovi into a neon-lit river of chance and dismantling the state’s image with respect to tourists. Meanwhile, ‘matka’ gambling flourishes unchecked across every corner and neighborhood, while everyone, from police to politician turns a blind eye.
Caught in this contradiction, North Goan clubs are living a geographic lottery in itself. While they continue to host housie games without interference, South Goa’s stewards of football are left gasping for air. What was once a game of luck is now a question of fate.
“Ever since COVID, everything has dried up; we no longer get sponsors like we used to,” says Dacosta, echoing the sentiments of organizers from Chinchinim to Cuncolim. “The housie helped us bounce back. Now, it’s gone.”
It’s more than just a financial chasm. It’s a philosophical one. In a state that claims to champion sport, why has the humble housie ticket, the same one that keeps a U-13 team alive, been deemed more dangerous than the casino chip or the matka slip?
Grassroots football (inter-village tournaments) in Goa is once again fighting for survival – not from lack of passion, but from the likely disappearance of the one thing that helped keep its heartbeat steady: a full house.
