PUNJAB JUCTION

After three successful seasons on the mat, the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) has clearly laid the foundation for a robust new era. Kabaddi, a hitherto unfancied sport, is suddenly awash in glory fuelled by a brilliant marketing strategy and powered by television. Credit is largely due to Star India and Mashal Sports, but both need to revisit their assumptions as they continue to deal with the ground-breaking opportunity facing Kabaddi today. Action from the Pro Kabaddi League. ibnlive The PKL�s eight teams representing Patna and Kolkata in the east, Mumbai and Pune in the west, Delhi and Jaipur in the north and Bengaluru and Visakhapatnam in the south provide adequate regional coverage to arouse pan-India interest. The month long caravan has worked well so far, growing in popularity with each successive run. Since its inception in July 2014, the owners have been thinking on the fly and the decision to make the competition a biannual affair is indication of their market savvy. But too much ...

Mumbai  | | March 09, 2016 Patna Pirates have won Pro Kabaddi League 2016. A look at how Star made a rural sport sexy. From a native Indian pastime to a glamorous high-octane televised spectacle, from a dusty mud ground to a made-for-TV, graphic-laden mat, from school-children breathlessly chanting the name of the game to A-list movie stars cheering from the front rows, the game of kabaddi has made quite a leap, all in a span of three seasons. In 2014, the centuries-old sport of kabaddi took flight with the introduction of the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), a franchise system that had eight teams and 96 players (26 international ones) in glittering arenas that almost rivalled the IPL. PKL also had the might of Star India, the official broadcaster and a majority stakeholder in the league. It has now completed three seasons. How did kabaddi become the nation's second most watched sport in its very first season? GLUED TO THE ACTION PKL's first season in 2014 reached 435 million viewers...

The Patna Pirates  may have walked away with the honors on Saturday after five weeks of relentless kabaddi in Star Sports' Pro Kabaddi League. But it was the game of kabaddi that really was the winner at end of every single game and every single day. As the league moved from city to city, state to state and touched culture after culture, it accumulated tons of love and won million hearts.      A sport so associated with rural India found place in hot discussions in big cities, trended on social media and got the generation next admiring the age old sport of the soil with the same vigor as any other world renowned sport.      A quick action-packed high-entertaining game is certainly what the audience crave for today and kabaddi does tick that box. But there is something more refreshing than sheer entertainment that Kabaddi has brought to the table, which has made the masses form a bon...