PKL’s ₹905 crore TV deal ended a year ago, and Season 13 now looks unlikely before June 2027
With no broadcaster signed, the Pro Kabaddi League will skip 2026 and is expected back in a June-July 2027 window, according to a Khel Now report.
Nov 3, 2026
The Pro Kabaddi League will not be played in 2026, according to a Khel Now report on 1 November, and Season 13 is now expected in a June-July 2027 window because the league still has no broadcaster. Khel Now’s source was not named, and no official statement has been quoted in the report.
If that window holds, the gap between Dabang Delhi beating Puneri Paltan 31-28 in the Season 12 final on 31 October 2025 and the first raid of Season 13 will be at least 19 months. Only the pandemic break, between Season 7 in 2019 and Season 8 in December 2021, was longer.
The TV deal is the problem
Star India, now JioStar, paid about ₹905 crore for a five-year deal covering Seasons 8 to 12. That deal ran out when Season 12 finished, and nothing has replaced it. A source quoted by Khel Now said the current broadcaster has offered half of what it paid last time, and that there has not been much interest from anyone else.
That last part should worry the owners most. When the rights were sold in 2021, Mashal Sports, which runs the league, set a floor of ₹900 crore. Sony, Dream11 and Reliance took tender documents. Star was the only bidder. Some team owners complained at the time that a company owning 74 per cent of Mashal Sports could hardly be a neutral buyer of its rights, and argued that the real market value was never tested. Mashal Sports called that baseless. Five years later the market is being tested, and the early answer is not flattering.
Why 2026 was always going to be tight
The calendar ran out some time ago. Last year’s player auction was held on 31 May and 1 June, and Season 12 started on 29 August. There has been no Season 13 auction at all, and with two months of 2026 left there is no realistic way to run one, build squads and stage a full league before January.
According to Khel Now, the franchise owners have gone to the Sports Ministry for guidance. Football took the same route this year. ISL clubs pressed their case with the AIFF, the sports minister met them in June, and the ISL 2026-27 season eventually started on 10 October. Kabaddi’s owners will hope for a similar result, though nobody has said what the ministry can actually do about a media rights negotiation.
The players are not short of kabaddi
India won both the men’s and women’s titles at the first Commonwealth Kabaddi Championship in Ahmedabad on 31 October, weeks after the men’s gold at the Asian Games in Japan.
The Kabaddi Champions League, the Haryana league that now has ten franchises, is also spending more. It has raised its player purse to ₹5 crore for its second season. At its auction on 17 October, Ayan Lohchab was the most expensive buy at ₹17.4 lakh for Jhajjar Jaguars, Naveen Goyat went to Kurukshetra Knights for ₹15.2 lakh and India’s Asian Games captain Sunil Malik joined Faridabad Fighters for ₹10 lakh.
Those are small numbers next to a PKL contract, and the KCL is not a replacement for a national league on national television. But right now it is the franchise league that is growing, while the bigger one waits. For a country that has just won the Asian Games and Commonwealth titles, that is an awkward place to be, and I suspect it will take a sharply cheaper TV deal, or a new buyer, to get PKL back on air next summer.