Mashal Sports, the organizers of the Pro Kabaddi League, introduced at the moment that they’re exploring the launch of an annual skilled league for girls’s kabaddi on comparable strains as the boys’s Pro Kabaddi League, which is now in its tenth yr.

“Our plans for a professional women’s kabaddi league are based on the success we have seen in the men’s league and our commitment to grow kabaddi as a modern world-class sport from India. We will be working with our various stakeholders, including the Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India (AKFI) and the International Kabaddi Federation (IKF) to launch the women’s league,” mentioned Anupam Goswami, CEO, Mashal Sports & League Commissioner, Pro Kabaddi League.

The proposed skilled league for girls will draw upon Mashal Sports’ expertise and learnings from the Women’s Kabaddi Challenge, a three-team check match that Mashal had organized and carried out with the assist and sanction of AKFI in 2016. Kabaddi gamers who participated as members of the competing groups – Firebirds, IceDivas, and StormQueens – recall the Women’s Kabaddi Challenge as the very best high quality kabaddi match that they had ever participated in.

“Ever since the launch of the Pro Kabaddi league in 2014, women kabaddi players in India have aspired to a professional kabaddi league of their own. Now, a women’s version of PKL will be a big dream come true for every woman kabaddi athlete in India, and also for women kabaddi athletes from other countries”, mentioned V Tejeswini Bai, who captained the profitable Storm Queens workforce on the Women’s Kabaddi Challenge in 2016.

Tejeswini is a part of the galaxy of Arjuna Award-winning girls kabaddi athletes in India, and in addition captained the Indian girls’s workforce the final time it gained the gold medal on the Asian Games, at Incheon in 2014.

The views of India’s main girls kabaddi gamers are seconded by India’s main male kabaddi gamers as properly, notably those that are acknowledged by thousands and thousands of PKL followers as main gamers of the boys’s league.

“Pro Kabaddi has transformed the lives and image of men kabaddi athletes across all of India. I know if Mashal Sports does a women’s league, it will do the same for women kabaddi athletes”., mentioned Ajay Thakur, former India captain who has additionally been awarded the Arjuna Award and the Padma Shri.

Thakur’s views are seconded by Pardeep Narwal, the enduring highest point-scoring raider from Pro Kabaddi, “The quality and popularity of Pro Kabaddi League have enabled us to acquire pride and respect as kabaddi players. I know that a women’s PKL will guarantee the same recognition and reward for our women athletes”.

As conventional and long-standing a sport as kabaddi is, it started gaining traction in recent times after the launch of the Pro Kabaddi League in 2014. Season 9 of PKL attracted a cumulative viewership of 222 million on Star Sports, the official broadcaster of Pro Kabaddi League, and reached thousands and thousands of viewers by way of Disney+ Hotstar. The play-offs and ultimate of Season 9 noticed a cumulative attain of 66 million, a 32% improve over the earlier season.