Pro Kabaddi League To Have 2 Seasons In 2016

BANGALORE: As Star Sports Pro Kabaddi League achieved a 50pct addition in its viewership rates in the second session after inaugural year in 2014, the official broadcaster declared the game session to have two sessions from next year.

As Indian viewers go happy with this news, Star has already announced the slots allotted for the game on television in 2016.  One will be right before the cricket IPL season in January and February; another will be later in the year around July-August.

Chief Operating Officer of Star, Sanjay Gupta comments "It is a five-week activity now. We want to move it to 10 weeks. More the volume, more popular it will be. A lot of young people are already watching kabaddi on our digital platforms, which is a great indicator."

Star is also the official broadcaster of Hockey India League. So both the tournaments of hockey and kabaddi will be simultaneously run on air by the Indian sports channel.

Gupta disclosed certain newsworthy facts of the Pro Kabaddi League of 2015.

The online viewership of the game rose up to 18.5pct. 90pcy of the game has been consumed by top six metros of the country. This definitely breaks the myth of kabaddi being a game for villages or towns.

A data from TAM Sports discloses that rating received the positive wave after the first 26 games of season two Pro Kabaddi League.

Discussions for extended brand partnership have already been started by U Sports, which runs the Mumbai franchise U Mumba owned by Ronnie Screwvala. Supratik Sen, CEO comments, "Two seasons would allow for greater continuity for brands to be associated with teams. Now brands can go beyond just advertising during the league to deeper associations."

The seven sponsors that U Mumba has gathered for 2016 session of Pro Kabaddi League includes Dr Reddy's, Nice Gel, Enerzal, Macho, American Tourister, IIFL and Velvetcase.com. The total cost of this comes to an approximate value of 9 crore.

U Mumba is also in plan to run some youth programs before the game starts on television in January. National director, sports and live events at GroupM ESP, Vinit Karnik encouraged this idea as he believes direct engagement with fans will allow Kabaddi to penetrate more in regular Indian life.

Managing Director Of  Mashal Sports, Charu Sharma expressed his thought, "There's a lot of kabaddi played in India through the year and is very well attended, but very little is telecast unlike other sports like cricket and football." Mashal Sports partners Star in order to broadcast the Pro Kabaddi League on television.

Owner of the Telugu Titans Kabaddi team, Srinivas Sreeramaneni, spoke about this two time broadcast of the game, "A short season disappears after 45 days and one has to rebuild the interest again. Two seasons will sustain interest and help brands as well." His team has already signed partnership with Maha Cement, TVS Tyers, Greenko, OSI Consulting, Art Ananthan and Uurmi. This year the Titatns for a total 5 crore from this same set of sponsors.

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