Pro Kabaddi League, Blue Eyed baby of STAR India – the principal owner of the league, is set for a revamp this season. There are more teams, more Bollywood quotient, more matches – and all coming at a premium.
InsideSport has confirmed information that the total number of teams is set to increase from the existing eight to 12. Teams from Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are set to join the eight existing franchisees – Bengal Warriors, Bengaluru Bulls, Dabang Delhi, Jaipur Pink Panthers, Patna Pirates, Puner Paltan, Telugu Titans and U Mumba. Among the four new franchisees, two of the new team owners are big names from Bollywood.
The association with the league that’s setting new bench marks for the sport industry comes at a high premium for new franchisees. The Franchisee fee, which had a base price of Rs 1 crore in Season One, is raised by up to 800% to 900% per cent. The new franchisees for Season Five have been signed for a franchisee fee of up to Rs 10 crore. Then there is players fee, team management and operations costs.
For STAR, a welcome addition to the Jaipur team owner Abhishek Bachchan, are two big guns from Cine World. Their presence, even association, is set to give a boost to ticket sales, marketing and sponsorship revenues, which are already reported to be pushing cricket on the growth charts. STAR, in another major strategic change, will run the league in one long season from July to October, as against two seasons in 2016. PKL will also set a new record in term of duration and games with 130 matches on the cards.
InsideSport has been following up with the STAR Sports PR and Kabaddi teams with all this information. A questionnaire is shared. But, they have not come on board to either confirm or deny this piece of news.
The gains are derived from sheer commercial success of PKL. In terms of absolute numbers added to the sports sponsorship pie, kabaddi has been the story of 2016, adding more numbers than cricket – yes, cricket – to the sponsorship pie. The Group M Sporting Nation in the Making Report IV, showing sponsorship research data for 2016, says something that in a year that saw the Indian Premier League build on the momentum from 2015, when India hosted the ICC World T20 for the first time, and the inaugural Tamil Nadu Premier League proved a success, it was kabaddi that was the ground sponsorship growth driver of 2016, more than Cricket..read more information click my website Insidesport
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