Kabaddi's Double Face: League Glamour and the Cracks in the Global Base

Kabaddi today sits among the very few Indian sports whose economic standing has been almost entirely rewritten in a single decade. Before the Pro Kabaddi League arrived, the sport was confined to mud courts, village courtyards and the annual sports day of government schools. Today it has television ratings, sponsors, franchises and athletes whose auction value is counted in crores. But behind that glare there is a second picture, one that deserves equal attention: a sport whose commercial success has far outpaced its global reach, and whose entire structure rests, at its base, on the market of a single country. That contradiction is both kabaddi's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The Pro Kabaddi League began in 2026 and reshaped the sport's economics in remarkably little time. Built as a partnership between media companies and sports administrators, the league achieved what national federations had failed to do for decades. It put the sport on domestic television's prime time, drew crowds, and paid players sums that athletes raised on the certainty of a government job could never have imagined. The format was simple, the season short, and the venue requirement nowhere near as expensive as cricket's. That made it a comparatively affordable investment for team owners. Gradually the league became the strongest claimant to the space behind cricket in India's domestic sporting landscape, and the value of its broadcast rights multiplied. Franchises attached themselves to cities, local identities formed, and players' faces began appearing in advertisements. Names such as Pardeep Narwal, Fazel Atrachali and Naveen Kumar are now familiar to domestic audiences, and that recognition is the sport's single biggest achievement. In every meaningful sense this was an extraordinary result for an Indian sport, given that even a game like hockey had failed to hold together a viable professional model. Yet the league's success and the sport's global standing are two entirely different things. Kabaddi's international landscape remains narrow. It is part of the Asian Games, but it has no place at the Olympics. World Cup-style events exist, but the number of participating countries and their competitive depth are limited. In reality only a handful of nations play kabaddi in an organised way and produce players capable of surviving at international level. India, Iran, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and, to some degree, South Korea and Kenya — that list is close to complete. It has not grown over the past several years at anything like the rate of the league's revenue. This is kabaddi's fundamental problem: the money is generated in India, but the sport's future needed to be decided outside India. Until a solid school and club structure takes root in new countries, international competition will remain confined to a few nations. At the level of the players, the contradiction becomes sharper still. The league's top athletes now live on large auction sums and healthy incomes. But in the same sport there are hundreds of players who, failing to find a league place, depend on state-level jobs, railway recruitment and police appointments. The league's financial benefit is highly concentrated — limited to a few dozen players — while the base beneath them is very wide. Injury risk in this sport is unusually high, because it is a contact sport and collisions occur daily. Careers are therefore short, and questions of insurance and medical support remain serious. For many players, a single league season accounts for a large share of their annual income. The model works only as long as the league keeps running; it is not a model of sustainable development, but a model balanced on one season. A strong sport is one in which a player does not have to depend on a single league alone. The national team picture reflects the same imbalance. India's dominance at the Asian Games has been long-standing, and Indian teams have won gold in both the men's and women's categories. But in recent years teams such as Iran have challenged that dominance, and India has been beaten on occasion. That is good news for the sport, because no game becomes global without competition. But it also means India's traditional supremacy is no longer self-evident. The real challenge for the national team is not a shortage of talent but the calendar. The league season, national camps and international competitions frequently collide. Players and administrators are then forced to choose what comes first — the professional contract or the national jersey. That conflict is not a healthy signal for any sport, and over time it affects the national team's preparation. Globalisation efforts have been made and cannot be dismissed outright. Iran has emerged as a serious kabaddi power, and its players also feature in the Indian league. Bangladesh has an old and deep attachment to the game. South Korea adopted the sport and invested in it. Countries such as Kenya and Uganda have also made a start. But the pace of these efforts has been slow, and they have not kept step with the league's commercial momentum. One major obstacle is the lack of uniformity in kabaddi's rules and formats. Different countries and federations maintain their own versions, and the process of building a standardised international framework has been slow. Until a clear, stable and broad international calendar exists, it will remain difficult for new countries to invest seriously in the sport. Securing a place in the Olympic programme requires both global participation and stable governance, and kabaddi still has work to do on both. Questions have also persisted at the administrative level. Disputes have arisen from time to time over the functioning of the national federation, its election process and its transparency. A lack of stability in the governance of the sport has a direct effect on players and state units. Poor coordination between the league and the federation has been a persistent concern as well. When a professional league and a national association operate on different priorities, the player is the one who pays. Beyond that, despite the popularity women's kabaddi has earned, it has not received the investment, broadcast exposure and contracts that the men's game has. That gap amounts to ignoring half the sport, and it cannot be called sustainable. Kabaddi's story now stands at a clear turning point. On one side is a sport that has established itself in India, that has an audience, and whose players now appear not only on the field but in advertisements and public conversation. On the other is a sport whose international standing has not grown in proportion to its domestic success. The real question is not how large the league will become, but how deep the sport will become. If kabaddi is to become a durable global sport in the way cricket has, it must look beyond league revenue — to an international calendar, standard rules, players' social security, equal investment in the women's game, and ground-level work in new countries. The glare can continue, but glare alone does not keep a sport alive. What kabaddi has is rare, and the time to protect it is now.