The 12 competing sides have released a combined total of 161 players ahead of the new season and will need to build brand new squads.
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The COVID-19 pandemic had put a sudden halt to all kinds of sporting activities and events around the world. Football, tennis, cricket, all of the biggest sports in the world were suspended for an extremely long period of time. Kabaddi was no exception. It has been an excruciatingly long time since the fans of the sport have seen India’s premier Kabaddi tournament. The Pro Kabaddi League has been off the television screens for a while but thankfully, it is finally making a comeback at the end of the year. December will see season 8 of the competition, with the player auctions scheduled to start on August 29. It will be a three-day affair, ending on August 31 in Mumbai.
More than 450 players will go under the hammer at the auction, as confirmed on the Pro Kabaddi League website. The 12 competing sides have released a combined total of 161 players ahead of the new season, and will need to build brand new squads. Most of these released players have been added to the pool for the auction. It will also comprise of athletes from the domestic field and the New Young Players. Players from the top eight ranked teams of the senior national kabaddi championships of the last two seasons and overseas players will make up the auction pool as well.
Each franchise can spend a maximum of Rs 4.4 crores in the auction and can avail a maximum of two Final Bid cards. That will depend on the number of players that they have already retained. Fans can expect fierce back-and-forth bidding as the likes of Pardeep Narwal, Ajay Thakur, Rahul Chaudhari, and Rohit Kumar among others would be up for grabs. They are some of the biggest names in the sport currently.
Auctions for the Pro Kabaddi League have always been a feisty affair. In season 6, six players hit the 1 crore mark, with Siddharth Desai and Nitin Tomar. The duo crossed eight-figure marks in season 7, but neither one has been retained by their respective teams for the upcoming season. The player auctions will be divided in four categories based on the base prices of players. These are Category A, B, C, and D. The base prices of the players in each category are as follows: Category A is INR 30 lakhs, B is INR 20 lakhs, C INR 10 lakhs, and D is INR 6 lakhs.
The Pro Kabaddi 2021 auction will be telecast live on Star Sports 1 Hindi, Star Sports 1 Hindi HD, Star Sports 2, Star Sports 2 HD, Star Sports FIRST, Star Sports 1 Telugu, Star Sports 1 Tamil, and Star Sports 1 Kannada TV channels in India. Live streaming of the Pro Kabaddi 2021 auction will be available on Disney+ Hotstar. Only bidding for category A players on August 30 will be broadcast live. The Pro Kabaddi 2021 auction starts at 6:30 PM IST. The auction can also be followed in the live auction centre on the Pro Kabaddi League website.
