PKL — The League Negotiating With Its Own Landlord

India's one non-cricket success has no broadcaster, no season date and no auction date.

India won the kabaddi golden double at the Asian Games on 26 September. The men beat Iran 40-34 to become nine-time champions. The women took gold alongside them.

Thirteen days later the Pro Kabaddi League has no broadcast partner, no confirmed start date for season thirteen, and no announced player auction. Its last deal, with Star, covered seasons eight to twelve. It expired in July.

How good it was

PKL's first season in 2014 drew 435 million viewers. The only Indian sporting event ahead of it that year was the IPL. The final alone drew 86.4 million.

Mashal Sports, founded by Anand Mahindra and Charu Sharma in 1994, built it. Star India bought 74% shortly after launch. The league went from eight teams to twelve in 2017.

It is a real business. Mashal Sports reported revenue of USD 35 million (INR 310 crore) and net profit of USD 4.8 million (INR 42 crore) in FY26. The year before it was USD 32 million and USD 3.9 million. Profitable, growing, twelve seasons old.

But 2014 was the peak. The current figure in circulation is 230 million viewers across TV and digital, 190 million of it on television. The audience has barely moved in a decade. The advertising money moved to digital underneath it.

The structure

JioStar owns 74% of Mashal Sports, the company that owns and operates the league. Anand Mahindra and Charu Sharma hold the rest.

JioStar was also the outgoing broadcaster. And JioStar is the party now seeking a cut in the rights fee of up to 50%, against a previous five-year benchmark of USD 103 million (INR 905 crore).

The franchises take 80% of media-rights revenue. So twelve owners are negotiating the value of their main income stream with a counterparty that owns three-quarters of their league.

This is not new. Mashal ran an open tender in 2021, reported to have followed conflict-of-interest complaints. Several companies bought the tender document. Only Star bid. Sony and Zee did not participate. The deal came in above USD 20 million (INR 180 crore) a season.

Rival broadcasters have again questioned whether competitive bidding is possible given the shareholding. In 2021 and now, nobody has put their name to the complaint.

What the numbers say

JioStar is reported to lose USD 5.7 to 11 million (INR 50 to 100 crore) a year on the league. If that holds, the demand for a 50% cut is arithmetic rather than aggression. The fee has been above what the inventory can carry, and the broadcaster has absorbed the difference because it also owns the asset.

In twelve years those rights have been exposed to a competitive process once. That process produced one bidder.

The franchise owners know what they are defending against. One told the Economic Times, anonymously: "Everyone wants to avoid a repeat of the ISL situation." That is a league whose rights fell from USD 31 million a year to USD 980,000 after its broadcaster walked.

Zee has said it would consider bidding. It picked up the 2026 and 2030 FIFA World Cups after JioStar passed. But there is no crowd of buyers for Indian kabaddi.

What has not happened

There has been no PKL development in the first nine days of October. The rights story was reported in mid-September and has not moved.

In July, Khel Now reported the league had no broadcast partner and no auction announcement. In August, that the auction was "likely" mid-October and the season "likely" to start in December. In September, a piece asking why season thirteen was being delayed.

The calendar explains part of it. The Asian Games and the Commonwealth Kabaddi Championship have crowded the window.