MUMBAI: The Bill Dosanjh promoted mixed martial arts tournament – Super Fight League (SFL) – will mark the presence of its second season, beginning February 2018, on Viacom’s youth channel MTV India, which has acquired the broadcast and digital rights to the 2018 league.
Organised jointly with the All India Martial Arts Association (AIMMA), the franchise based league will entail prize money of Rs 40 million. British businessman and sports enthusiast Bill Dosanjh, founder of the SFL, who was present at the launch of the second edition of the SFL in Mumbai on Monday said, “We have spent almost Rs 250 crore (Rs 2.5 billion) in the last five years and are looking to invest a further Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) over the next three years.”
Season one of the league, held in New Delhi last year, was telecast on Sony Pictures Networks. The second season will be held in Mumbai where eight teams from across India will play out the tournament at the MTV SFL arena at the Famous Studios, said SFL global director Avi Mittal. The show will be telecast live on weekends beginning 9 February till the finale on 17 March 2018.
After having stayed away from the sports genre for a long time, Viacom has entered the arena with a sport that has a strong youth connect and opting to air it on its own youth brand MTV. In a statement, Viacom 18 COO Raj Nayak said, “Mixed martial arts is a niche sport in India but one that’s gaining a lot of popularity. Through MTV’s association wiht Super Fight League, we aim to popularise the sport and make it accessible to a much larger audience than it currently enjoys – the youth of India.”
SFL is the first MMA organisation to feature female fighters and through its second edition, aims to promote gender equality through a ‘platform with women having the same influence on the team as men’. The league entails a group ‘A’ and ‘B’ consisting of four teams each. Each team has six players – five male and one female – and six back ups, belonging to six different weight categories. The teams within the group compete with each other in 12 leage level matches.
The eight teams that participated in the January 2017 league are back in the fray – Mumbai Maniacs (owned by Dabur’s Amit Burman), Haryana Sultans (owned by SPA Capital/India on Track’s Kanav Parwal), Delhi Heroes (owned by Hero Cycles’ Aditya Munjal), Gujarat Warriors (co owned by Amit Agarwal, Keshav Bansal and Nilesh Parmar), UP Nawabs (owned by the Jaura Group’s Jaskaran Punihani and Navraj Jaura), Sher E Punjab (owned by Vi- John;s Achin Kochar), Bengaluru Tigers (owned by Shreeram Suresh and Vinodini Suresh) and Goa Pirates (owned by Transcend Sports’ Pramod Sharma and Uday Singh Wala).
