Kabaddi is long out of the hinterland and has emerged as the biggest sporting league in India. Akshay Sharma attended an international forum on this contact sport in Mumbai to bring you a report on how Pro Kabaddi is an amazing live sport television lesson other sports are keen on learning
When 23-year old Rishank Devadiga, a raider for UP Yoddha in the Vivo Pro Kabaddi tournament, walked into the Grand Hyatt hotel in Mumbai on June 28 to attend a media forum, he was in a familiar setting.
The conference hall was packed with special guests and media, and the lobby where the caterers had laid out an extensive array of food were sights familiar to the young man from Mumbai. But, there was one difference this time round. Devadiga was there as a guest and participant of the event, not as a waiter which was the case earlier.
Speaking at a session focussed on the transformation that the Pro Kabaddi league (PKl) has brought to the lives of players, he shared his personal journey. “Earlier, I used to work in a hotel like this where I used to man food stalls you see outside today, serving tea and doing other such work. It feels great to have moved on in life and to be sitting here now.”
Devadiga’s tale echoes those of many other players hailing from both urban and rural India whose lives have been transformed by PKl’s arrival on the Indian sporting scene in 2014.
Devadiga’s co-panellist, 22-year old Deepak Hooda, who will represent Puneri Paltan in the upcoming season, had his own story to tell which differed in detail but was filled with the same up-from-the-bootstraps spirit.
“Having lost my father early, I had to take over the responsibility of my family which included not just my mother but also my sister and her children. My mother wanted me to continue my studies but I had developed a great passion for Kabaddi. She felt that playing the game is not going to help me earn a decent livelihood so she discouraged me from playing the sport.”
Both Devadiga and Hooda are now highly-valued players picked up by franchisee teams for large sums of money. While Devadiga was bought by the UP Yoddha for Rs 45.5 lakh, Hooda commanded Rs 72.60 lakh.
They are part of a full-scale revolution in the sport of Kabaddi. The transformation brought to cricket by Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in the late 1970s pales in comparison to what PKl has done to this indigenous sport.
But it was a revolution waiting to happen after IPl. Soon, sports channels, promoters and governing bodies of various sports were rushing to start their own version of IPl. Today, we have ISl in football, HIl in Hockey, PBl in badminton and many others.
But there is one big difference between these tournaments and PKl. While the former were launched to make these sports more popular and viewer-friendly, the latter was an overdue attempt to cash in on the latent popularity of Kabaddi in India.
Just like wrestling, which is present in every corner of India, especially rural areas, Kabaddi has always enjoyed a beneath the surface massive fan following. Some years ago, the Punjab Government organised a Kabaddi World Cup in their State. The version of Kabaddi played there is unique to Punjab and is known as ‘Circle Kabaddi.’ The massive crowds at the event, including a large number of women, showed how big the sport is. It was only a matter of time before somebody saw the potential to bring it to live television.
Star Sports, which has the broadcasting rights of many of these new leagues, and Mashal Sports, a sports management firm having industrialist Anand Mahindra and well-known sports commentator Charu Sharma as shareholders, cashed in on the opportunity and the league began in July, 2014.
In a recent interview Star India CEO Uday Shankar revealed the investments made into the league at the beginning. “We have invested over Rs 700 crore on Kabaddi so far, while revenues have been less than Rs 100 crore. By increasing teams and doubling the number of matches, our investment per season and resultant losses will also double. We are in it for the long term. We will keep investing and I see PKl to remain in investment mode for five years before breaking even.”
According to a report released by ESP Properties-SportzPower, on-air sponsorships for PKl’s fourth season earned Star Sports Rs 45 crore during. This viewership has risen over the first four seasons. The very first season was watched by 435 million people which in terms of viewership of sports events was second only to IPl that year. The viewership for the second season was 56% higher and rose further by 36% in the first week of the third season. Overall the growth in viewership was 51% over the first four seasons. The average impressions generated for Season 4 were 10 million.
The above figures vindicate the organisers’ move to tweak the rules of the game in order to make it more viewer-friendly. A 30-second time limit was introduced for raiders. A new stipulation of ‘Super Tackle’ was brought in which gave the defending team two points instead of one. Along with that, Kabaddi was staged in a whole new setting with eye-catching light-effects and loud music to go with it. It was Kabaddi like no one had seen before.
Asked whether the organisers faced any resistance from the establishment over the innovations being brought in, Charu Sharma was full of praise for the administrators. “We wouldn’t have gone ahead with rule changes if there was even the slightest resistance. But the Kabaddi Federation trusted us and understood what we were trying to do. It was meant to make the game more viewer-friendly. Players took some time to get used to them but eventually did.”
Sanjay Gupta, managing director of Star India, though had a slightly different experience. “I remember when we were trying to kick start the kabaddi league, the kind of challenges that faced us were bizarre. Although this sport already had a strong following in Punjab and Haryana, we couldn’t add teams from those states just because they didn’t have a single indoor stadium to host any matches! There were almost no professional trainers, coaches, technical crew, commentators – it seemed like a bottomless pit. look at where the sport is today. It has become the second biggest sport of the country. But even bigger is the fact that kabaddi players are feted and recognised, and their stories have found their way into every corridor conversation.”
The arrival of this glamorous league led to a windfall for players. In the auction for Season 5, conducted in May this year, the costliest buy was Nitin Tomar, who was picked up by UP Yoddha team for a whopping sum of Rs 93 lakh. The overall expenditure on players in the auction was a staggering Rs 46.99 crore.
But it’s not as if Kabaddi was financially a barren sport before this revolutionary tournament. It drew large crowds across the country. Circle Kabaddi was being promoted by rich NRI Punjabis based in the UK who organised and promoted these hinterland tournaments.
Hooda mentioned how his entry into Kabaddi was due to the opportunities offered by the game.
“When I was looking for a job with decent money, I was told by friends that State-owned enterprises were hiring Kabaddi players in their teams. I took it as a job opportunity. The financial security it offered convinced me to take up the sport as a profession,” he added.
He pointed out that his home State Haryana provides more opportunities in Kabaddi than other sports like Boxing and Wrestling.
“Even before PKl, we could get decent jobs through the sport. I took to Kabaddi because of the job opportunities the game provided. Army, Navy, Air Force, Banks, BPCl, ONGC, Air India and many other departments offer jobs to Kabaddi players. I feel that playing Kabaddi gets you a job quicker while it takes longer for Boxers and Wrestlers to do so. If a Kabaddi player works hard, he gets hired sooner,” he said. Apart from the money being showered on players, the other revolutionary change has been the popularity of the sport among those sections of society which were not associated with the game.
Rahul Chaudhari, one of the biggest stars of PKl and captain of Telugu Titans, couldn’t help noticing how class barriers in Kabaddi are being broken by the popularity of the league.
“Kids have become interested in this game. Unlike in the past when children studying in English-medium schools were prevented from playing Kabaddi as parents feared they would get hurt, they want them now to participate in this sport. Earlier Kabaddi used to be played on mud courts and urban youth were scared of getting scolded by their parents for getting their clothes dirty. In villages however, youngster used to play fearlessly. The mats for playing Kabaddi has this been a big change.”
Pro Kabaddi’s commissioner Anupam Goswami, refers to market research to flaunt the popularity of the game among even the elite sections of society. “Many elite schools are forming impromptu Kabaddi teams and having impromptu Kabaddi matches. They don’t have a Kabaddi coach, a Kabaddi court, they don’t have a competition to go to but they are setting up matches,” he pointed out.
All leagues aim at gaining popularity in metropolitan cities. “We have tried to be slightly different. We are present in small towns like Patna and Sonepat. We wanted to retain the original catchment of Kabaddi apart from creating new ones like Andhra Pradesh, for instance,” Goswami adds.
Another stunning feature of the success of PKl has been its popularity among women in India. “In Season 1 itself, PKl had the highest number of female respondents on digital platforms compared to any other sport including cricket. In other sports the percentage of women respondents was around 7% but in Kabaddi it war around 20%. A lot of commentary was coming from urban middle-class women.”
But are women only interested in watching the sport or also in playing itIJ Deepika Joseph, a leading star of the Indian women’s Kabaddi team who participated in the Women’s Kabaddi Challenge, a mini-league launched as an appendage to PKl, talked of her dream put to see a women’s PKl.
“When I see the popularity of PKl in India and the passion with which women also play this sport, I feel there should be a similar league for us as well,” she said at the forum.
But Goswami wouldn’t rush into it. “Right now, I am expanding the league which is a big step. So, that is my priority. We are still understanding the lessons from the Women’s Kabaddi challenge. Women’s Kabaddi challenge, when it happened, it was the most viewed women’s sporting event in the history of Indian sports television. The final of the women’s Kabaddi challenge rated higher than the final of the ICC Women’s World T20. We see great scope in it. But when we do it, we will do it at a breakthrough level which will be at least comparable, if not higher than what we did for PKl with men’s Kabaddi.”
The success of PKl has led to the organisers introducing four new teams to the event from the upcoming season and making it a longer tournament that will be played over a period of three months with 138 matches. It is now the biggest league in Indian sports. The ambitions of the organisers and the sponsors are soaring and it seems that for this millennia-old sports, sky is the limit.