India’s sports economy is entering a transformative decade. Once dominated almost entirely by cricket, the country’s sports landscape now features a growing ecosystem of indigenous leagues, digital-first fan communities, and increasingly diversified revenue models.
According to a Deloitte–Google market projection, India’s sports industry currently valued at just under $2 billion is expected to expand exponentially, reaching $130 billion by 2030 (Deloitte–Google Report, 2024).
But the real story lies beneath the surface: 90% of Indian fans today follow multiple sports, signaling the strongest era of multi-sport consumption the country has ever witnessed. Cricket remains the commercial anchor, but Kabaddi and Kho Kho two homegrown disciplines are quietly building empires of their own.
India’s Expanding Sports Audience Base
The Ormax Sports Audience Report 2024 identifies 678 million Indians as active sports followers, with three clear audience tiers (Ormax Media, 2024):
- Tier 1: Cricket – India’s unrivalled juggernaut with 612 million followers, representing 42% of the population.
- Tier 2: Football and Kabaddi – Football commands around 305 million fans, while Kabaddi closely follows with 280 million.
- Tier 3: Kho Kho and Emerging Sports – Kho Kho, powered by the Ultimate Kho Kho (UKK) league, has built a 64 million-strong global following within just two seasons (YouGov & BARC, 2024).
This layered structure highlights how indigenous sports are no longer niche. Instead, they are becoming essential to India’s growing sports economy, tapping into audiences that global franchises have often ignored.
While spectatorship continues to surge, physical participation remains alarmingly low. A 2024 India Today Health Report revealed that only 10% of Indian adults regularly play sports, while 155 million people are considered physically inactive. Moreover, 57% of Indians fail to meet the World Health Organization’s recommended physical activity levels (India Today, 2024; PMC Study, 2021). This disparity between spectatorship and participation has reshaped the economics of Indian sport.
Professional leagues now function primarily as entertainment ecosystems rather than participation drivers, with success hinging on broadcast engagement, digital monetization, and sponsorship return on investment.
Cricket: Still the Economic Anchor
Cricket remains India’s unrivalled mass-market product, continuing to deliver unprecedented scale and engagement. BARC data confirmed that the IPL 2025 Final shattered all records, attracting 169 million television viewers and generating over 15 billion minutes of total watch time, surpassing the India–Pakistan T20 World Cup clash of 2021 (BARC, 2025). The league’s opening weekend alone drew 253 million viewers, reaffirming that cricket’s viewership ceiling continues to expand.
Financially, cricket is in a league of its own. The Indian Premier League (IPL) recorded $9.5 billion in total revenue in 2024, placing it alongside global leagues such as the NBA and Major League Baseball (The Media Ant, 2024). The digital rights ecosystem is evolving rapidly too Viacom18’s ₹5963 crore acquisition of the BCCI’s bilateral rights (₹67.8 crore per match) marked a decisive shift, where digital value surpassed TV rights for the first time (Hindustan Times, 2024).
Domestic media revenues for IPL 2026 are projected to hit $1.21 billion, driven by the separation of digital and TV deals (CricExec, 2025).
From a consumption standpoint, 89% of Indian viewers identify YouTube as their top sports content platform, and fans now spend 20% more time on non-live content such as interviews, highlights, and commentary (Think with Google, 2024). The cricket audience itself is demographically rich 90.4% of fans are between 18–44 years old, and female viewership has surged by 21% over recent editions (Start.io, 2024; The Media Ant, 2024).
In short, cricket’s model anchored by digital monetization and inclusive fan demographics remains the template for commercial success.
Kabaddi: The Blueprint for Non-Cricket League Success
If cricket represents scale, Kabaddi represents sustainability. Since its 2014 inception, the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) has emerged as the most successful non-cricket league in India (ET Brand Equity, 2025). The league’s Season 10 registered 17% growth over Season 9, reaching 225 million viewers and amassing 38 billion minutes of total watch time (BARC & Leaders in Sport, 2025). The inaugural season, in contrast, drew 435 million viewers, demonstrating immediate national resonance.
PKL’s success rests on localization multilingual broadcasts in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu have enabled the league to dominate India’s regional markets. According to Ormax data, 59% of India’s sports audience lives in rural areas, and Kabaddi is their preferred sport after cricket and Kho Kho (The Media Ant, 2024). This localization strategy has made Kabaddi commercially appealing to mass-market advertisers. As marketing platform Unpauzed notes, PKL offers “high regional engagement at a lower cost,” making it ideal for regional brands targeting India’s 105 million rural middle-aged male consumers.
Financially, PKL’s structure is sound. Its media rights deal is worth ₹900 crore, with approximately ₹180 crore distributed to teams per season (ET Brand Equity, 2025). Some franchises such as Haryana Steelers report annual profits of ₹2 crore, thanks to lean operations and steady sponsorships (SportsMint Media, 2025). Unlike the Indian Super League (ISL), which continues to struggle financially due to high infrastructure and import costs, PKL maintains positive margins and high retention among sponsors. In 2025, eight Kabaddi players crossed the ₹1 crore annual salary threshold, proving that the league has built a sustainable athlete economy (Leaders in Sport, 2025).
In essence, PKL is not just a sports league it’s a blueprint for scalable, profitable indigenous sports commercialization.
Kho Kho: From Mud to Mat, an Emerging Market Force
Among emerging properties, Ultimate Kho Kho (UKK) stands out as a case study in modernizing a traditional sport. Launched in 2022, UKK transformed India’s age-old game into a fast-paced, televised league that appeals equally to urban and rural audiences. According to YouGov Sports and BARC, UKK’s inaugural season reached 64 million global viewers, including 41 million from India, making it the third-most viewed non-cricket sports league in the country (Hindustan Times, 2024). The league’s total media footprint crossed 164 million impressions, backed by broadcast innovations like Spidercam and multilingual coverage on Sony Sports Network (YouGov, 2024).
Its audience quality is particularly striking: 70% of viewers belong to the SEC AB (urban elite) category, while the rest come from semi-urban and rural regions. The gender split is equally impressive, with 41% of UKK’s audience being female, a standout figure in India’s male-dominated sports ecosystem (Hindustan Times, 2024). Financially, the league has deployed ₹100 crore in investments across its first two seasons (Livemint, 2025), generating ₹132.5 crore in media value. The Kho Kho Federation of India is now expanding the sport’s international footprint from 55 to over 90 countries, unlocking new opportunities for global media rights (SportsMint Media, 2025).
This balance of urban elite engagement, rural authenticity, and gender diversity positions Kho Kho as a high-quality asset for premium advertisers seeking inclusive reach.
India’s non-cricket sports segment now contributes 14% (₹2,559 crore) to the total sports economy and is growing at a rapid 24% annually (Economic Times, 2025). Corporate investors like Adani Sportsline, JSW Sports, and Capri Global have doubled down on indigenous sports, seeing them as high-yield assets in a diversifying market.
The key takeaway is that indigenous sports deliver ROI differently. While cricket offers premium global-scale monetization, Kabaddi and Kho Kho provide high engagement at sustainable costs, with deep cultural resonance. For brands, the diversification of audience quality across cricket, Kabaddi, and Kho Kho enables tiered marketing reaching urban Gen Z fans digitally, rural viewers through vernacular content, and women through inclusive sports storytelling.
The Future: Building a Balanced Sports Ecosystem
India’s next growth chapter in sports will depend on integration, not competition. Each major property plays a distinct role:
- Cricket provides scale, international relevance, and digital monetization.
- Kabaddi ensures sustainable profitability and deep rural penetration.
- Kho Kho delivers demographic balance and female engagement for premium advertisers.
Meanwhile, digital behavior is reshaping everything. 93% of Gen Z fans use a second screen while watching sports, and indigenous leagues are already tailoring strategies for this multi-screen generation (Upstox Originals, 2025). Fans now expect 24/7 engagement, from behind-the-scenes stories to athlete-led content. As these formats mature, the challenge for India’s sports industry will not be audience creation it will be audience retention through storytelling, digital innovation, and authentic representation.
India’s sports market is not just growing it’s evolving intelligently. Cricket continues to anchor the ecosystem, but Kabaddi and Kho Kho are redefining how success is measured: not by scale alone, but by quality of engagement, inclusivity, and sustainability. If current trends continue, India won’t just be a single-sport nation with satellite leagues it will be a multi-sport powerhouse, where indigenous games coexist with global formats in a thriving, $130-billion industry by 2030.
Key Sources:
Deloitte–Google (2024), Ormax Media (2024), India Today (2024), BARC (2025), YouGov Sports (2024), Hindustan Times (2024), Economic Times (2025), ET Brand Equity (2025), SportsMint Media (2025), Think with Google (2024), Upstox Originals (2025), Livemint (2025), SportsMint (2025), Leaders in Sport (2025), The Media Ant (2024).
