How Kabaddi has become one of the fastest-growing sports in India

The Pro Kabaddi League had become so huge that it had more than one million spectators in 2017 itself when the league was only starting to gain followers. Siddharth Sharma, the creative director of Star Sports, spoke about how sceptic people were when the channel entered the partnership. No one could believe that people would watch the sport on TV. 

"It was a sport that was not embraced by urban India, (they) completely overlooked the sport." He added, "The setting of the sport was such that it used to be played on dusty bowls." Despite all the doubts and scepticism, Star Sports went ahead with the sport, and within four years, it became the most highly watched sport in India after Cricket. 

In December 2018, when the sport was only growing on Television, reports showed that it had more TRP than an Indian cricket test match played during the same time. Despite being a comparatively new sport, PKL has already gained a viewership that is 75% of the viewership of IPL. This is an outstanding achievement, provided cricket has always been the most popular sport in India. PKL has already started competing with its popularity in the eight seasons that have been telecasted so far.

With the increasing popularity, the players' salary has also increased manifolds. In the recent PKL season, the players' wages were as high as 1Cr (Fazel Atrachali) and 89L (Sandeep Nahar). Moreover, its popularity is also owed to the new fast-paced game introduced in PKL and to many teams owned by big stars like Abhishek Bachchan. PKL started with eight teams and now has 12 teams in the league. 

Regardless of what many experts said about the sport not having the ability to be famous, Kabaddi has become the second most popular game in India after Cricket, and this is only the beginning. It remains to be seen what more the sport is capable of accomplishing in the coming year.