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When the Premier Badminton League (PBL) launched in India in 2016, it carried the promise of a revolution. The idea was bold: take a largely individual sport, inject it with the energy of a team-based city franchise format, and bring Indian and international stars under one roof. For a time, it seemed to work. Crowds were excited, broadcasters had something new to sell, and brands like Vodafone were quick to associate themselves with the property.
“The early buzz was unmistakable,” recalls a senior broadcast professional from the industry. “You had P.V. Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, and Carolina Marín in the same league, playing for city-based teams. It gave fans a chance to see badminton reimagined.”
Badminton in India has always had pedigree, but rarely glamour. PBL changed that narrative. The sight of Olympic medallists and world champions battling it out in a colourful, prime-time package was compelling. Matches weren’t just about personal glory; they carried the weight of team rivalries, city pride, and the drama of league competition.
Yet, beneath the surface, cracks began to show. Chinese players, who dominate the world circuit, were notably absent, denying the league an essential layer of global authenticity. Still, for a while, PBL managed to hold attention and gave Indian fans something unique.
But as the seasons rolled on, the commercial realities became impossible to ignore. “Like most Indian sports leagues outside the IPL, sustaining commercial success was always going to be difficult,” says the same broadcast veteran. “Broadcasters eventually lost interest as growth plateaued. Audience engagement wasn’t moving the needle anymore, and with that, revenue hit a ceiling.”
This was perhaps the PBL’s biggest challenge – badminton’s popularity in India is undeniable, but it doesn’t translate into year-round fan engagement at the scale advertisers and broadcasters crave. The IPL works because cricket is a religion, commanding millions of eyeballs and delivering unmatched return on investment. PBL never quite managed to cross that threshold.
Another issue was timing. Badminton’s international calendar is among the most congested in world sport, with Superseries, World Championships, and Olympic qualification events criss-crossing the year. For top players, committing to a franchise league in India was always a logistical gamble.
“Fans wanted consistency, but the reality was that the best players couldn’t always show up,” says the broadcast professional. “That diluted the product. Once star names were missing, interest automatically dipped.”
The tension between global obligations and local ambition meant that PBL could never quite guarantee the marquee clashes that fans expected. Without predictability, broadcasters found it harder to market, and sponsors were reluctant to double down.
By 2020, just four years after its launch, the writing was on the wall. The India Open, a well-established individual tournament, found its place in the calendar, while the PBL quietly faded away. The pandemic sealed its fate, but the decline had begun much earlier.
It is telling that most fans today remember Sindhu’s World Championship triumph or Nehwal’s Olympic run far more vividly than any franchise rivalry in the PBL. The league simply did not leave a lasting emotional imprint.
The story of PBL is instructive for Indian sport. It shows that enthusiasm and novelty can light a fire, but only sustainable economics can keep it burning. For sports outside cricket, leagues must align with international calendars, secure consistent broadcaster commitment, and most importantly, cultivate year-round fan ecosystems that extend beyond the event itself.
In many ways, PBL was a noble experiment that fell short of its ambition. It showed what was possible, but also revealed the limits of trying to retrofit the IPL model onto other sports without fully adapting to their realities.
As the broadcast professional concludes, “PBL was a spark. It created moments, but it never became a movement. And in sport, unless you’re a movement, you fade away.”
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