PlayCom 2025: Participative disciplines redefining landscape of sporting business in India

Sport has shed its conventional definition. The domains of lifestyle, recreational and more extensively, participative disciplines have redefined the topography of sporting business.

During the ‘New Frontiers in Sports: Play, Fitness and More’ panel at Sportstar’s PlayCom Business of Sports Summit at Bharat Mandapam on Saturday, Neha Parab Kandalgaonkar, the vice president and head of corporate communications at Procam International, filled the audience in on the said tectonic shift in the Indian sports landscape.

“The base of people who want to be active and engage in a fitter lifestyle is slowly increasing. Participative sport has created a cultural and social mind shift in people. Around 20 years ago, if somebody told me that a 65-year-old would want to run a half-marathon, triathlon or any other endurance sport, it would have been unheard of. But that has been possible today, and I think that’s the beauty of participative sport.”

Deepak Raj, country head of the India chapters of the IRONMAN and HYROX, said the inception of the latter, a global, mass-participation indoor fitness race, has given gym enthusiasts something to be excited about. He said, “When we brought the IRONMAN to India, there were only a few triathletes. Even the gym-goers never had a race or a sport despite being really disciplined and active. With the HYROX coming in, this existing base has an event to look up to. We are just four months old… each of us is doing it in very different ways, but we are growing.”

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Parvin Dabas, co-founder of the Pro Panja League, thanked the Government for fuelling the growth of non-conventional sports in the country. He said, “The (Indian) Government does have a hand. We’ve got to give them credit. They have made it acceptable, and a lot of states are starting to fall in line with the Olympic movement. People in power are now understanding the soft power of sport. It is making a big difference. As we change as a country, we have more time for these events. And that change is going to be very rapid now.”

Furthermore, Dabas revealed that India has secured the hosting rights of the World Armwrestling Championship next year. “This is the first time I am saying this – we have got the rights for next year’s World Armwrestling Championship. It’s not cheap for players to go abroad with plane tickets and expensive hotels. It is a huge headache. Our players will get international experience at a much lower cost when the event happens in India. Maybe they can catch a bus or train and stay at much cheaper hotels. They will be able to brush shoulders with the best of the best from around the world. That will give them more confidence. We are creating stars, which is leading to a lot of other younger players coming in and driving mass participation across the country.”

Panja isn’t the only Indian sport that is managing to find its feet in a cramped ecosystem. Pickleball, an emerging trend, has trickled down to peri-urbane locales through Instagram reels and YouTube shorts.

“The first international team for pickleball just got picked in August. It will be representing India at the World Cup in Miami at the end of October. It has players aged under 16 and some even above 50. The more these things happen, the more the sport will pull (people) in because then, there is something to keep them hooked onto, like an aspiration to even represent the country after 50. I am definitely one of the candidates who would want to be there. These are the kind of things that fuel aspiration and ambition,” said Sameer Pathak, an administrator of the sport.

He added: “The biggest advantage with pickleball has been the accessibility. It’s a very easy game to start out with. If you have played badminton, squash, tennis or table tennis, it’s easier. What that has done is it has made the sport very inclusive at the beginning stage itself. For example, there is a tournament where the father or mother can play with their children.”

Tuhin Mishra, managing director and co-founder at Baseline Ventures and promoter of the Prime Volleyball League, said the sport, like pickleball, is also being organised extensively ‘at the ground level’.

He said: “Now, a lot of teams are opening academies, which are not just meant for the senior players, but also for those who are at the grassroots level, coming from humble backgrounds. For example, Bengaluru Torpedoes, a PVL team, has opened a volleyball academy at the Padukone-Dravid Centre for Sports Excellence. Then, we have Thomas Muthoot (managing director of the Muthoot Pappachan Group), who owns one of the teams from Kochi. His daughter, Hannah, is now building huge infrastructure and they will also have a volleyball academy there. In India, our league’s viewership is split 57-43 between men and women. It’s one of those sports which is not skewed (gender-wise), which means that we can actually involve more women as well to take up the sport.”

Published on Sep 13, 2025