For years, women's kabaddi in India has sat in the shadow of its men's counterpart. National championships have been run. International medals have been won. But there has not been a professional structure with full-time contracts, prime-time broadcast and the kind of league economy that Pro Kabaddi has built on the men's side. That changes in August.
The Asian Kabaddi League, billed as the world's first fully professional women's kabaddi league, will launch Season 1 in August 2026 with eight city-based franchises and around 120 contracted athletes. The headline broadcast deal has Sony Sports Network locked in as the exclusive national broadcast partner, with prime-time coverage scheduled for the inaugural season.
For a league that did not exist in the marketplace 18 months ago, the Sony deal is a statement of where the league believes the audience can be.
Director Shauryaveer Chandwani described the broadcast partnership as more than a content distribution agreement.
"The partnership with Sony Sports Network is not just a broadcast deal. It is a declaration" that women's kabaddi deserves premium visibility, Chandwani said.
The project has been built deliberately around grassroots connection. The league's pre-launch program, "On The Road with AKL," had organisers riding Royal Enfield motorcycles from Delhi to Fazilka to scout playing communities and gather feedback before announcement day.
"Every kilometre of that ride told us something no market research could," Chandwani said. "The hunger for this league does not live in boardrooms."
Managing director Dushyant Singh, speaking at the announcement, framed the day in unusually personal terms.
"I just want someone to watch," Singh said. "Tonight — she has an audience of two hundred and fifty people in this room, and millions more on Sony Sports in August."
The structural offering to athletes has been the league's quiet game-changer. The 120 contracted players will receive professional-level salaries, formal multi-year playing contracts, an established coaching infrastructure, and broadcast exposure on a network that delivers regular households across India. This is the first time a women's kabaddi player in India can sign a contract with a league rather than a state association.
For the women's national pool, the timing is also strategic. India's women's senior team won their second consecutive Kabaddi World Cup in November 2025, and the Indian women's beach kabaddi team won gold at the Asian Beach Games 2026 in April. The professional league is built to capture a women's audience already engaged with the international success stories — and to monetise the participation surge those wins have driven across the country.
The Asian Kabaddi League also fits into a broader Indian sports rebuild. The Hurun India Most Valuable Sports Teams report, released this week by Fanatic Sports, highlighted the rapid valuation growth of India's professional league franchises and named the women's leagues as a major future growth lever. The Pro Kabaddi League sits in that report alongside the Indian Premier League and the Indian Super League, with women's leagues like the WPL and now the Asian Kabaddi League positioned as next-cycle entrants in the same multiplied-valuation pipeline.
No specific franchise list has been confirmed yet. The eight cities are expected to be a mixture of established kabaddi markets and growth cities targeted at the Sony broadcast region distribution. Auctions, coaching announcements and full schedule details are expected before mid-year.
For the women's players, the league is the first time in domestic kabaddi history that a tournament has been designed around them as the primary attraction rather than as an associated competition. For Sony, the partnership is an opening on a sport that has been one of the most surprising broadcast successes of the last decade in India — only this time, the broadcast schedule will run with women on the prime-time scoreboard. The Asian Kabaddi League Season 1 begins in August 2026.