Cricket is India’s biggest sport, that much is indisputable. But its popularity is set, its future is stable and everyone has a good idea of where it will be in a few years. The same can’t be said for kabaddi though. This is India’s fastest growing sport and if it continues to grow at this rate then it could one day topple all other sports for the honor of being India’s number 1.
The Rise of Kabaddi
In 2014, StarSports bought the TV rights to the Pro Kabaddi League, leading many to question the decision. According to the network’s Creative Director, Siddharth Sharma, many rivals, and members of the public, asked questions like, “Why would somebody watch [kabaddi on television]”?.
It was a sport that had been rejected by the majority of urbanites, one that was played on dirty and dusty courts. It simply didn’t come across as an immediately obvious choice for a major TV network.
But those doubters were quickly proved wrong. Thanks to a lot of advertising and good-old word-of-mouth, the Pro Kabaddi League became one of the network’s biggest draws and in a short space of time it became one of the country’s biggest leagues.
In 2017 it experienced its biggest surge, increasing its viewership by a staggering 100 million people in the space of just 1 year. To put this into perspective, the Pro Kabaddi League attracts more viewers in India than the FIFA World Cup, which has billions of viewers worldwide and is the world’s richest, biggest and most lucrative sporting tournament. Kabaddi also attracts more fans in India than weekly NFL games do in the United States.
Kabaddi vs Cricket
Despite this huge surge in popularity kabaddi still plays second fiddle to cricket, and the Indian Premier League in particular. The IPL has a significantly higher brand value, it has more fans within India and, more importantly, it also has a much larger following outside of the country.
Kabaddi simply hasn’t been able to compete with cricket on a consistent basis and still lags behind the sport in many areas.
However, the nation’s biggest sport hasn’t always had everything its own way and kabaddi has nudged ahead a few times. In December 2018, there were more viewers for several Pro Kabaddi League games than there were for the Indian cricket team’s test match victory over Australia.
This achievement seemed impossible just 5 years ago, but it was an inevitability by 2017—if anything, the only surprise is that it took that long to happen.
Can Kabaddi Beat the IPL?
In India, kabaddi betting is just as popular as IPL betting and it’s also doing a great job with sponsors and TV rights. Player auction prices are growing at a rate of knots, with the price paid to the most expensive player increasing by 60% from 2016 to 2018. It also recently signed the biggest non-cricket sponsorship deal in Indian history when it put pen to paper on a $40 million contract.
Cricket, and the IPL in particular, is huge in India and it’s a mighty league to topple, but nothing is better placed to take its crown than the Pro Kabaddi League.
Despite this, kabaddi has one huge thing working against it: it’s not well known outside of India. There are a handful of top international teams in Asia and there are also domestic teams and kabaddi clubs around the world, but as witnessed by the last Kabaddi World Cup, these are often very inexperienced.
The teams the non-Asian countries fielded looked out of place—like they didn’t understand the rules. And in most cases they don’t, having been thrown together from several different disciplines and taught the game in just a few weeks.
There are countries with a very strong foundation of kabaddi and these could help with the growth of the Pro Kabaddi League or with the formation of a cross-country league much like Super Rugby for rugby union. In the 2018 Asia Games, for instance, the Iranian team took gold in both the male and female events, relegating India to a bronze medal position for the men (behind South Korea) and silver medal position for the women.
How this sport fairs in other countries will have a huge impact on the growth of kabaddi, because real money comes from taking a sport/league global, as evidenced by the monumental success of certain European soccer leagues. The IPL has a strong fanbase behind it because it knows that if it signs a few big name cricket stars and manages to appeal to a global fanbase, then it can start pulling in more investment, sponsorship, ticket sales, and merchandise from countries like South Africa, Australia and England.
The Pro Kabaddi League doesn’t really have that global fanbase ready-in-waiting, but it has only been around for a few years and it has come on great leaps and bounds in that time. If it continues at this pace then anything could happen.
