MUMBAI: A ‘bigger, meaner and stronger’ Premier Badminton League will kick off in Guwahati on Friday. The league in its third edition this year, will have eight teams and will culminate with a finale in Hyderabad during the Pongal weekend in January 2018.
The league this time boasts of eight current World Championship medallists, nine Olympic medallists and 16 players
in the top-10 of world ranking. The league has retained Vodafone as title sponsor while Servo of Indian Oil will be the co-sponsor. Bajaj Electrical and Bisleri have also been signed as sponsors.
The matches will be telecast on Star Sports HD 1 and Star Sports 1 and streamed on Hotstar. In the last season, 33.8 million unique viewers watched the league, while the total viewership was at 77.74 million.
The third edition of the Premier Badminton League (PBL) opens with a grudge match, with PV Sindhu’s Chennai Smashers taking on Saina Nehwal’s Awadhe Warriors on December 23. Two more teams -Ahmedabad Smash Masters (owned by Padmanabh Industries), and North Eastern Warriors (owned by TK Engineering Consortium) – have been added for season three, and Atul Pande, managing director, SportzLive, which conducts the league has said that he believes this will translate into higher footfalls and an estimated sale of 40,000 tickets this season.
Existing teams are Awadhe Warriors, owned by the Sahara India Group; Bengaluru Blasters, owned by N Prasad, Sachin Tendulkar and others (Matrix Badminton Team Works); Chennai Smashers, owned by VPVS Sports; Delhi Dashers (owners to be announced later this week); Hyderabad Hunters (Agile Group); and Mumbai Rockets owned by Zoylo Digihealth.
“The aim is to make PBL on par with the World Championship or even bigger,” said Pandey, as he spelt the growth of the league from 60 to 80 players and 23 matches spread over 28 days including the travel time.
Each team will have one under-17 player, with a chance to compete against the top players, which was felt to augur well for the future of the game in the country. Each game will be best of three sets, with a sudden death point at 14-14.
