Star Sports Pro Kabaddi League set to have two seasons in 2016

Pro Kabaddi will have 2 seasons in 2016

After its grand success for a second consecutive year, The owners of the Star Sports Pro Kabaddi League have decided to make this successful venture available to the people twice a year from the next season onwards.The League is an initiative of Mashal Sports, which is co-promoted by Mahindra and Mahindra owner Anand Mahindra.

The COO of Star India Sanjay Gupta confirmed that Star Sports Pro Kabaddi, was a 5-week event from last two years and he wants to make it 10 week a year by having two editions a year. The idea is to play the tournament once in January-February 2016 and once in July-August 2014.

“It is a five-week activity. We want to move it to 10 weeks. More the volume, more popular it will be. A lot young people are already watching Kabaddi on our digital platform, which is a great indicator.” Mr Gupta told the Economic Times.

As per the available data of the opening 2 weeks,  Star Sports Pro Kabaddi viewership on TV increased by nearly 56% from the last year’s viewership. During the inaugural season tournament viewership was 435 million viewers, which was the second in India after the 560 million of IPL viewership.

The online viewership also increased 13 million unique visitors, which is 18.5 times than of last year’s 7 lakh unique visitors.

Star India is going to schedule the event just before two big cricket events of next year. Once in January-February just before the ICC T-20 Cricket World Cup and once in July-August just before the Indian Premier League. The first chapter will be telecasted simultaneously with Hero Hockey League in January.