Ask anybody in India – which is the most followed sport in the country? And the answer will be cricket is leading by miles. But if a closer look is taken, the other sports are slowly moving ahead.
And surprisingly, it’s not football or wrestling that is second best at the moment, it is kabaddi!
The Pro Kabaddi league is the only league in India which has shown a growth in television viewership in each of its four seasons. The tournament has seen a cumulative growth of 51 per cent since its inception.
The highest bid (Nitin Tomar – Rs 93 lakh) of this year’s Pro Kabaddi League auctions has increased by 626 per cent as compared to the first season. Rakesh Kumar was bought by the Patna Pirates for Rs 12.8 lakh in the first auction in 2014.
Winning the Ratings Race
As far as TV viewership is concerned, cricket is way ahead, but the second-most viewed sports tournament is kabaddi.
In IPL 2016, an average of 819 million impressions were recorded, whereas an average of 10 million impressions were recorded in the fourth season of the Pro Kabaddi League.
Impressions are a way to calculate the total viewership of a particular event. It’s a number of individuals in thousands of a target audience who watched a TV channel, averaged across minutes.
Out of the total viewership of live sports, 20 per cent was contributed by non-cricket games in the last year or so.
And 80 per cent of that 20 per cent, was contributed by Rio Olympics, Pro Kabaddi League, Kabaddi World Cup, Premier Badminton League, Indian Super League and Hockey India League.
Out of the non-cricket sports, Pro Kabaddi League had 61 per cent share of the total impressions.
When the average normalised impressions are calculated for each of the sports listed above, Pro Kabaddi League still leads the way with the Kabaddi World Cup slotting in at the second place.
However, there were two seasons of Pro Kabaddi League last year – Season 3 in January-February 2016 and Season 4 in June-July 2016.
But with both the seasons put together, the action ran for about two-and-a-half months, which is the same as one season of the ISL.
Kabaddi Ranks Third in Money Battle
Even when it comes to salaries, kabaddi is slowly inching closer to the top two sports – cricket and football.
Cricket is definitely way ahead with Yuvraj Singh being the costliest-ever player in the IPL with Rs 16 crore. He was bought for that amount by the Delhi Daredevils in 2015.
But with Tomar bagging a bid of Rs 93 lakh, kabaddi is giving great competition to Indian Super League – where Mumbai City FC’s Diego Forlan (Uruguay) is the highest-paid player (Rs 6 crore).
Pro Kabaddi League has trumped Hockey India League, Premier Badminton League and Pro Wrestling League as far as possessing the costliest-ever player is concerned.
Germany’s Moritz Fuerste was bought by the Kalinga Lancers in the Hockey India League auctions in 2015 for Rs 69 lakh. Saina Nehwal and Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei bagged the highest bids (65 lakh) in the Premier Badminton League auctions in 2015.
And Oksana Herhel (Ukraine) was scalped for Rs 41 lakh in the 2015 Pro Wrestling League auctions.
Vivo Electronics Corporation, who sponsored IPL for the last two seasons, also sponsors the Pro Kabaddi League. They bagged a deal valued at Rs 300 crore for a period of five years.
And the deal with IPL, for a period of two years, was valued at Rs 200 crore.
Kabaddi is really close to cricket as far as sponsorship is concerned.
Kabaddi – Sport Rooted to India?
Since, it’s a sport that originated in India (Tamil Nadu), the people of the country are able to relate to it and therefore, that may be the reason behind its rise in this part of the world.
The sport’s popularity can be seen through the fact that there were two seasons of Pro Kabaddi League held in one year.
There is only upwards for this sport from here on, let’s hope the kabaddi stars are celebrated as much as India’s cricket champions in the near future.
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