APL — India’s Best Sport Has a League That Publishes Nothing
India's best sport by conversion rate has a league. Two seasons in, nobody has published its prize money, its fees, or who owns four of its six teams.
The Archery Premier League's second season opened on 8 October at People's Plaza in Hyderabad. The Rajputana Royals beat the Prithviraaj Yodhas 5-3, a repeat of last year's final. It runs to 18 October. Six franchises, 48 archers, double round-robin, a 15-second shot clock against World Archery's standard 20.
The sporting case
At the Asian Games, Indian archery returned nine medals from ten events: five gold, two silver, two bronze. Gold in the women's compound team, the men's compound team, the mixed compound team and the women's recurve team. And Kumkum Mohod became the first Indian to win individual recurve gold at an Asian Games.
No other Indian sport converts like that. Athletics sent the largest contingent and returned 24 medals and one gold.
Every one of those medallists is in this league. Kumkum Mohod and Sahil Jadhav at Chero Archers. Jyothi Surekha Vennam at Kakatiya Knights. Dhiraj Bommadevara at Mighty Marathas. Chikitha Taniparthi at Chola Chiefs. Alongside them, Mathias Fullerton, the world's top-ranked compound archer, and Casey Kaufhold.
The archers talk about the format. Chikitha Taniparthi: "I learnt a lot about managing pressure under the faster shot clock of 15 seconds per arrow." Deepika Kumari: "It's completely new, and the time is technically 15 seconds to shoot, but we sometimes get even less than that."
None of them talks about the money.
What is not published
Archery Premier League Private Limited was incorporated on 2 September 2025, one month before its first season. Its registered office is Gate No. 2 of the DDA Yamuna Sports Complex in Surajmal Vihar — the Archery Association of India's own venue.
Its authorised capital is USD 17,000 (INR 15 lakh). Its paid-up capital is USD 11 (INR 1,000).
Its three directors are Virendra Kumar Sachdeva, Anil Kamineni and Joris Paulose Ummacheril. All three are archery officials.
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Franchise fee | Not disclosed |
| Prize money | Not disclosed |
| Player fees | Not disclosed |
| Title sponsor | None. The "Principal Partners" slot on the league's own site is empty |
| Sony LIV rights fee | Not disclosed |
| Attendance, season 1 or 2 | Never published |
| Ticket prices | Not published |
| Terms of Telangana's "support" | Not disclosed |
| Owners of four of six franchises | Never published by anyone |
Two owners are on the record. Tata Steel owns Chero Archers, confirmed in its own release. The Prithviraaj Yodhas are owned by Randeep Hooda, Lin Laishram and Vikas Garg, with Ebix backing.
Rajputana Royals, Mighty Marathas, Kakatiya Knights and Chola Chiefs have never had an owner named. Not by the league, not by the federation, not in launch coverage, not on their own pages.
The structure
The Archery Association of India launched the league, organises it, and governs the sport.
Virendra Sachdeva is the AAI's secretary general, the league's director, a named director of the operating company, and since November 2025 an elected member of World Archery Asia's executive board. The operating company is registered at the federation's stadium.
The National Rifle Association of India has done the same thing with the Shooting League of India. That league was scheduled for November 2025 and postponed to February 2026. We could find no result, no winner and no post-event coverage of it.
The National Sports Governance Act 2025 does not address any of this. We read the Bill. The words "league", "commercial", "broadcasting" and "sponsorship" do not appear. "Conflict of interest" appears once, barring conflicted people from ad hoc administrative bodies.
One lever exists. Recognised federations are deemed public authorities under the RTI Act for their statutory functions.
What the league does say
Event director Anil Kamineni told Business Standard in September that sponsorship carries almost all the revenue, that break-even arrives around the second or third season, and that media rights become meaningful only from the third or fourth. He called season one an investment.
The season-one audience: 3.15 million minutes watched on Sony LIV, average session 29 minutes, 97% of watch time live. 103,527 YouTube views from 63,600 unique viewers. More than 30% on connected TV.
The inventory is small by design. Three matches per two-hour broadcast, three or four 90-second breaks each. Roughly 10 to 13 breaks a night. That is the whole sellable surface.
The question for Indian sport
Kamineni's candour deserves saying out loud, because it is rare. Set against Hockey India projecting USD 10.2 million and collecting USD 1.5 million, a promoter who says "year three, maybe" is doing something unusual in Indian sport: telling the truth about the timeline.
Which makes the silence on everything else harder to explain. A league with eleven dollars of paid-up capital, four anonymous franchise owners and no published prize money is not hiding a scandal. It is far more likely that nobody has thought to publish, because nobody has ever been asked.
That is the problem. The federation regulates the sport and owns the business, and the only check on that arrangement is disclosure. In two years there has been none. Not one number that would let an outsider see whether the archers who just won India five Asian Games golds are being paid properly for standing on that line in Hyderabad.
It will matter the first time something goes wrong. It always does.
Should a national federation own the commercial league in its own sport — and if it does, what must it publish?