Yuva Kabaddi Series, the supposedly youth Kabaddi league, announced the launch of it’s Inter-District Youth Kabaddi League, starting on March 30. However, question marks surround the league, with regards to how such a event was given permission, and whether this is a inter-district tournament or a franchisee based league.
Which is Maharashtra’s League? Yuva Kabaddi Serie or Maha Kabaddi League?
Although the Yuva Kabaddi Series mentions that its under the aegis of Maharashtra State Kabaddi Association, the league however is still listed as “Invitational District Final Mens Under-23 Tournament” organized by Kranti Jyot Mahila Prathisthan.
As far as the rights for organizing a state wide league is concerned the rights previously lied with a company organizing Maha Kabaddi League, which defaulted on its payments. Ultimately, a team owners association had to be formed to organize a state wide franchise based league who currently hold the rights to organise a franchisee based league.
Kabaddi, and especially Maharashtra state Kabaddi Association, has strict guidelines in place with regards to starting your own league, however it seems these regulations haven’t been followed by Yuva Kabaddi Series. A inter-district league could hamper the rights of existing stake holders of MKL and league, who are the owners association.
While MSKA, may have given permission to them to organize a tournament, the YKS is anything but a regular tournament, poised to become a bad mutation of a district cum franchisee league.
The Yuva Kabaddi Series might seem like a franchisee run event, on the lines of IPL, PKL and others, however when you look closely, these so called franchisees have adopted district teams and associations, with their logos and these teams are being fielded as franchisees, thus creating confusion amongst what already exists.
The format of the league is also confusing, like anything, Each franchise will play a single round robin called survival, which later sees a elimination of 1 team, them another single round robin of the remaining teams in a booster round which sees another set of eliminations, with finally a challenger round that sees another set of matches.
