Mumbai — Elev8 India Sportz announced the close of Season 1 of its Regional Kabaddi Championships (RKCs), establishing the caravan as one of India’s fast-scaling commercial sports properties. In just 18 days, the RKC caravan delivered 100 matches across five states through five marquee properties — Aapli Mumbai Kabaddi Championship (Mumbai), Maru Kabaddi Championship (Rajasthan), Dilli Queens Kabaddi Championship (Delhi), Ganga Damodar Kabaddi Championship (Bihar & Jharkhand), and The Gandaberunda Trophy (Karnataka) — fielding 46 teams and 653 athletes while generating 9.18 million views. A High-Frequency, High-Engagement Commercial Model
The RKC caravan is built for commercial velocity. Rather than concentrating value in a single national tournament, Elev8’s multi-market quarterly format delivers year-round relevance, recurring broadcast inventory, and repeat sponsor touchpoints across the country’s most passionate kabaddi markets. Beyond traditional branding, this model unlocks high-impact opportunities for strategic sponsor activations with the fans. Notable examples include the Health Camp co-hosted in Bihar with Saksham Hospital parallelly during the matches to increase local brand awareness and facilitate highly effective customer acquisitions.
This results in a portfolio of premium, regionally rooted championships that keep brands in front of engaged audiences far more often than a single-window league allows. “Season 1 proves the commercial depth of regional India,” said Vikas Gautam, CEO – YKS & RKC, Elev8 India Sportz. “Unlike massive, centralised national leagues, the RKC model is built around the markets that live and breathe this sport. What keeps audiences hooked isn’t any single feature — it’s that the story never stops. Local rivalries get a big stage, new match winners break through, and because the RKC runs quarterly rather than once a year, fans don’t follow a one-off event — they follow a series that picks up again every few months. No long off-season, no resetting to zero, no drifting away.
That continuous, year-round attention is exactly what brands trust.” Format Innovations Built for Broadcast The caravan distinguished itself with broadcast-first format innovations engineered to maximise drama and viewer retention. Tactical “Power Plays” — limited 3 minute windows in which every raid and tackle carries bonus points — added strategic volatility and momentum swings tailor-made for live audiences. The Gandaberunda Trophy introduced a “Best-of-3 Sets” format that reset the scoreline each round to guarantee peak intensity and competitive parity from first whistle to last.
Dilli Queens Kabaddi Championship underscored surging commercial demand for women’s regional sports. It turned out to be one of the season’s standout commercial draws, pulling 2.05L+ votes through Awaaz, Elev8’s proprietary fan-voting platform. Built and owned in-house, Awaaz can be fully tailored to each sponsor’s objectives — turning fan engagement into bespoke branded activations and the first-party audience data that partners actually want. Commercial Validation and the Road to Season 2 In spite of being staged squarely during IPL — Indian sport’s most dominant fan attention window, when cricket leaves little oxygen for anything else, Season 1 confirmed regional kabaddi as a powerhouse for digital reach, generating 9.18 million views and 664.8K+ interactions across platforms.
Anchored by exclusive broadcaster ABP Network, one of the largest Indian broadcast and news media groups with a 500+ mn digital reach, and supported by a 16-brand partner roster spanning national and regional names, the caravan delivered commercial partners high-frequency visibility across India’s heartland markets. Together these partnerships demonstrate a clear, high-yield route for brands to reach engaged regional audiences that single national platforms rarely touch. “Real-money gaming was the category that bankrolled much of Indian sports recent growth.
The ban reset the economics of Indian sport overnight.” said Mit Kothari, Deputy Head of Strategy & Investments. “National leagues like our Yuva Kabaddi Series will always own the top of the funnel with an unmatched reach and scale. But higher engaging depth is built regionally. State and regional leagues are where fans form genuine affinity — with teams that are truly theirs and local heroes they see themselves in. Pairing that regional depth with national reach is the trend that will define the next decade of Indian sport.” As Elev8 India Sportz gears toward RKC Season 2, the focus remains on broadening sponsor engagement and unlocking further value through enhanced on-ground experiences and digital fan engagement. About Elev8 India Sportz: Elev8 India Sportz has been creating sports leagues and regional championships across India since 2022.
The firm operates a dual-model of excellence: owning flagship leagues like the Yuva Kabaddi Series while providing end-to-end turnkey solutions for championships, sports organisations, corporates, federations and associations. Founded by Suhail Chandhok and Arvind Sivdas and driven by a 23-member collective of innovators, Elev8’s mission is to redefine how sports are sustainably built and monetised in India.