With big bout, boxers to have a league of their own

India is set to get its first official boxing league.

The round robin format tournament, backed by the Boxing Federation of India, will begin from October 19. It will comprise six franchisees in the first season with 14 boxers in each team.

Titled ‘Big Bout, the Indian Boxing League’, it will compete with the likes of other leagueformat sports like cricket, football, kabaddi and badminton for viewer eyeballs.


The 21-day league will have 18 days of fights, including 45 hours of live content. Each team will have 10 Indian boxers and four international ones, in seven weight categories. Teams will have 10 males and four females.

Top Indian pugilists including six-time world champion and Olympics medallist MC Mary Kom, Asian Games gold medallist Amit Panghal and others will be part of the league.

Delhi-based sports marketing firm SportzLive is the official licence holder and has sold television rights to Star India for its Star Sports bouquet of channels. “We will separately sell digital rights in India and overseas,” said Atul Pande, MD, SportzLive. “Globally, there is an evolved digital ecosystem for fights and contact sports. Even within India, we will explore putting the fights on free-to-air regional channels to get mass reach,” Pande said.

The rights for regional television channels will be sold separately, he said.

Each franchisee will pay around Rs 4 crore to run the team in the first season.