Pro Wrestling League attracts Rs 11 cr in player bids

The highest spender was the Haryana franchise by spending a total of Rs 1.96 cr during the auction

As India inches towards becoming a multi-sports nation, yet another sports league has been added to the bevy of leagues in the country. This time, it is the Olympic style free-style wrestling that is getting a league of its own, thanks to a partnership between the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) and Prosportify Private Limited (PPL). The tournament, called Pro Wrestling League, will take place in December and will see six teams fight it out to win the champion’s title.

This is the first domestic city-wise league in the realm of wrestling in India. Until now, the audiences have been served wrestling in the form of an Olympic sport or in the form of platforms like WWE and TNA Wrestling. Viacom18’s Colors had tried to include the sport as part of its programming over the weekends with Raj Kundra’s Super Fight League, but did not find much traction for it with the Hindi entertainment audiences.

The league organised player auctions at an event in Delhi which saw the six teams, one each from Punjab, Bengaluru, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai. The auction saw a total of 159 domestic and international players go under the hammer, of which 54 were picked up (nine by each team). A total of Rs 10.80 crore was spent by the teams to acquire these players. Each team has four categories of players they bid for – international men (two players per team), international women (two players per team), Indian men (three players per team), and Indian women (two players per team).

The other non-cricket leagues in the country – The Hero Indian Super League, The Star Sports Pro Kabaddi League and The Hero Hockey India League saw similar investments in players. PKL saw close to Rs 10 crore spent by the eight teams, while teams shelled out close to 27 crore on players in the HHIL. The spends in the Hero ISL were Rs 7.22 crore, albeit for just 10 Indian players.

This, of course, is nowhere close to the auction bids that players in the Vivo Indian Premier League, the annual 20-20 cricket tournament, command. Each of the eight teams in the 2015 edition had a purse of Rs 63 crore to spend and resulted in almost Rs 470 crore being spent only on player retention, trading and auction.

In case of the PWL, the highest bid was commanded by Ukranian (female) wrestler Osana Herhel (Rs 41.3 lakh vs a base price of Rs 33 lakh) followed by Belarus’ Vasilisa Marzaliuk (Rs 40.2 lakh vs a base price of Rs 23 lakh) and India’s Yogeshwar Dutt (Rs 36.7 lakh vs a base price of Rs 33 lakh).

The highest spender was the Haryana franchise, which picked up both Herhel and Dutt, spending a total of Rs 1.96 crore during the auction. The next highest spender was the team from Punjab at Rs 1.86 crore followed by Mumbai with auction spends of Rs 1.79 crore.

The league is yet to announce its broadcast partner. However, it will be aired at a time when TNA Wrestling will be airing its first ever live event in India on Sony Six from the MSM India network.