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STAR CAST: The captains of the PKL teams
Those who turn their noses up at kabaddi had better wake up and smell the sweat. The game — played across schools and colleges in India — is set for a revival. Despite its stadia-filling popularity and local roots, it has so far been an invisible contact sport. But come July 26, and that could all change. Mimicking cricket's IPL avatar, the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) hopes to unleash the vigour of a local game that was lurking in plain view.
Spread over a five-week schedule, PKL will be telecast live by STAR Sports as it plays out in stadia across the country, from Calcutta to Vizag and Patna to Pune.
The brainwave of commentator Charu Sharma and industrialist Anand Mahindra, PKL is the first initiative of their company Mashal Sports.
Sharma's interest was triggered after he joined as a commentator for kabaddi at the Doha Asian Games 2006 where for the first time all 22 games got a live commentary feed. Sharma was stunned to discover that kabaddi tickets were sold out three months in advance.
Back in India his travels revealed a popular wrestling sport with vast audiences. The game has two teams that play on two sides of the ground. Each team sends to the other side a 'raider', who has to tag a member of the opposite team and return to his (or her) team without taking a breath.
Around seven lakh schools play the sport and live kabaddi matches often attract over 50,000-strong audiences for a single game. Even a megapolis such as Mumbai has 400 active kabaddi clubs. Punjab draws audiences of over a lakh.
As Sharma began toying with the idea of pushing kabaddi to the next level, his brother-in-law Mahindra suggested a professional kabaddi league.
The final push came from former NBA International president Heidi Ueberroth. In 2010 during a visit to India, Ueberroth was 'captivated' by the sport she saw on television. 'Given its fast pace, action packed raids and the combination of strategy, teamwork and athleticism, she convinced me that kabaddi was the 'complete sport' that was ideally suited for television audiences,' Mahindra says in an email.
Four years later, the Pro Kabaddi League is a reality.
Mahindra calls kabaddi 'truly India's 'aam aadmi sport', given the relatively meagre infrastructure it needs'. As co-promoter he wants to take this 'quintessentially Indian sport from out of the shade and put it in the sun', he says, refusing to put a number to his investment.
Sharma's Mashal Sports has aligned with the International Kabaddi Federation and has got STAR TV to telecast the PKL matches live.
'I was shocked at the numbers and the vigorous calendars of these clubs,' says Supratik Sen, head, Unilazer Sports, a company owned by UTV's Ronnie Screwvala. Screwvala is among the eight franchise owners who include the Future Group's Kishore Biyani, co-chairman of Mukand Ltd Rajesh Shah, actor Abhishek Bachchan, and Radha Kapoor, whose father is Rana Kapoor of Yes Bank.
'The right people are already in it. We can take it bigger and better,' Sen says.
Kabaddi also presented a grounds-up sport for Unilazer which would sync with Screwvala's 20-year-old NGO, Swades, which was a grassroots outreach programme.
For Biyani, PKL segued with a mass retail branding exercise that could be amped up with a dose of aspirational glamour. The Future Group's chief marketing officer Akshay Mehrotra feels PKL is rural but modern. 'Like Big Bazaar, we can make kabaddi very large. Modern retail started with Big Bazaar in Calcutta which is why we bought the city franchise,' he says.
For one franchisee, it was personal. 'Almost everyone knows what kabaddi is,' says Mukand Ltd co-chairperson Rajesh Shah, who bought the Patna Pirates in his personal capacity.
Shah knew little about the game when he pondered over being a team owner. But after a talk with Mahindra, he watched Asian Games segments on YouTube and was impressed with the backward leap of one particular player, Rakesh Kumar, an Arjuna Award winner. Shah just kept bidding till Patna Pirates bagged Kumar for Rs 12.80 lakh, the highest bid at the player. (To give a frame of reference, the Arjuna Award fetches Rs 5 lakh.)
After the Indian Badminton League and the Indian Football League, STAR decided to become a strategic partner with Pro Kabaddi. For the channel, engaging with kabaddi was 'a strong contrarian call', says Anupam Goswami, senior vice-president, STAR India. It is India's own sport in which it is clear-cut champions. While some may say kabaddi is not for PLU (people like us) or glamorous enough, for Goswami it presents a 'fantastic product combination'.
He says: 'We are not just a broadcaster for PKL; we have joined hands with stakeholders, franchisees and Mashal. It is useless to talk about revenues at this point. We want to showcase a world-class event where right now the consumers are first and advertisers second. Bring in the audience, the advertisers will follow.'
Anyone still wonders why kabaddi? 'Because they are crazy,' says an astonished corporate handler, shying away from being quoted. But if industrialists and movie stars are backing a game considered under-par glam, it is because they think they are on to possibly the next big thing. 'It's a fab sport, and a youth driver,' says the indefatigable Sharma.
Tick the boxes for kabaddi. In India it has a mass following; it is a low-cost sport; it's modern, for kabaddi can be scaled up. Chalk up the political connect of a game that defines grassroots and it is a powerful reason for franchise owners to step up. Shah's father Viren Shah, readers may recall, was once Governor of West Bengal and a Bharatiya Janata Party MP.
Sen says Unilazer does not want to sit on the sidelines and be a passive investor. 'We believe to bring mass change we need to be in it, and kabaddi provides a reason for both the game and for aspirations,' he explains.
Meanwhile, there is excitement among the players, too. 'I was in Bangalore for the Asian Games camp when I heard the news that I had got the highest bid,' Patna Pirates captain Rakesh Kumar recalls.
'They are all thrilled about the money, for a month and a half's play. For some it will change their lifestyle, their dreams,' says Devraj Chaturvedi, assistant secretary, Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India, and CEO, International Kabaddi Federation. He is particularly happy for Deepak Hudda, 20, who was orphaned when he was a small boy. Hudda got the second highest bid of Rs 12.6 lakh.
Chaturvedi says some of these players will become stars if PKL takes off. 'They are all good-looking men. Tall, fit, under 80kg,' the Future Group's Mehrotra adds.
The PKL will be telecast over 34 days on two channels, STAR and STAR Gold.
Goswami contends the leap of faith is not the channel's but of the eight franchise owners. Tier 2 cities such as Patna and Visakhapatnam have owners who are acquiring a sports team for the first time. For a 10-year period, Unilazer is looking at budgeting Rs 6-10 crore every year.
The way the sport is played is also changing. No longer in galis and mud fields alone, it has morphed for indoor stadia with specialised shoes, mats and good lighting.
Unilazer wants to be part of the change that builds the landscape for the sport, says Sen, who sees a Hemmingway-ish character in his player Jeeva Kumar — 'a short man with bruised and battered fingers who plays because he loves the game'.
Kabaddi may be poised to raid the sun. PKL stakeholders have their fingers crossed.
Spot check
Venues for the matches
Bangalore, Delhi, Jaipur, Calcutta, Mumbai, Patna, Pune, Visakhapatnam
Schedule
July 26 — August 31
