India's sports economy has been a one-name story for most of the last twenty years — the Indian Premier League, with cricket franchises that valued well into the billions while every other domestic property fought for measurable commercial scale. A new Hurun India report has now mapped the shift that has slowly emerged through the post-pandemic period: India is becoming a true multi-sport franchise economy, with the Pro Kabaddi League headlining a list of competitions delivering measurable annual valuation growth.
The Fanatic Sports Hurun India Most Valuable Sports Teams 2026 report, released on May 19, covers six professional leagues spanning more than 55 franchises and 1,300 athletes. The franchises analysed sit across the Indian Premier League, the Women's Premier League, the Indian Super League, the Pro Kabaddi League, the Hockey India League and the Prime Volleyball League.
For the analysts behind it, the structural story is the multiplication of league economics outside cricket.
"India is becoming a multi-sport nation, with strong growth in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and rising participation from women's leagues," said Raghav Gupta, CEO of Fanatic Sports, in the report's release.
The methodology uses a dual approach. Each franchise is valued using a discounted cash flow model based on FY2025 financials, and that figure is benchmarked against a revenue multiple between 25 and 33 times — a band that maps where established sports franchises sit globally. The four-factor scoring system that overlays the valuations weights performance and titles, brand and fan engagement, multi-league or global presence, and city economics each at 25 percent.
For Pro Kabaddi League franchises, the inclusion in the same valuation framework as IPL and ISL teams is the structural acknowledgement the league has been chasing since its 2014 launch. PKL franchises now sit on the same valuation chart as some of the most valuable property in Indian sports, with the report flagging consistent annual valuation growth across kabaddi franchises that have grown their fanbases beyond their home markets.
The Hurun India founder Anas Rahman Junaid framed the underlying consumer behaviour driving the shift.
"Rising incomes are driving a shift in consumption patterns, with discretionary spending on sport — tickets, merchandise, OTT subscriptions and fan engagement — expected to accelerate," he said.
The athlete data underlying the report is granular: 1,323 athletes evaluated across 504 Indian cities and 181 regions, using sport-specific performance metrics. For a country whose sports economy has historically been counted in numbers of cricket fans rather than franchises and athletes across leagues, the breakdown is the most concrete picture yet of where the broader sports market actually sits.
What the report does not provide is specific PKL franchise valuations — the comparative dollar values across franchises were not included in the published release. But the framework is the news: PKL sits inside the same valuation chart as IPL and ISL, with the same DCF and revenue-multiple methodology applied. The league no longer operates as an alternative property; it operates as a measurable component of India's franchise sports economy.
The broader context that the report sits inside has been moving in parallel. The Asian Kabaddi League will launch in August as the first fully professional women's kabaddi league with a Sony Sports broadcast partnership. The Women's Premier League cricket competition has been growing its franchise valuations. The Indian Super League has stabilised its broadcast and franchise structure after a period of restructuring. Pickleball, arm wrestling and other niche competitions are being built out at participation level.
The Hurun report effectively says one thing: the franchise-based Indian sports economy is now broad enough to be measured as a multi-sport phenomenon rather than a cricket monolith with curiosities attached. Pro Kabaddi League's franchises are valued inside that frame.
The Indian sports valuation map has been redrawn.