2016 Pro Kabaddi League season was the third season of Pro Kabaddi League, a professional

kabaddi Kabaddi is a contact team sport. Played between two teams of seven players, the objective of the game is for a single player on offence, referred to as a "raider", to run into the opposing team's half of the court, touch out as many of their ...

league played in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

since 2014. Pro Kabaddi, which saw astounding success in its second season, was all set to make its much awaited return for a third season from 30 January 2016, just five months after completion of the second season.

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part ...

hosted the opening leg of Season 3, with the first match being played between

Telugu Titans Telugu Titans is a Kabaddi team based in Vishakapatnam and Hyderabad that plays in the Pro Kabaddi League. Telugu Titans is a franchise of Veera Sports owned by Mr. Srinivas Sreeramaneni of Vaya Group, of NED Group and Mr. Mahesh Kolli of Green ...

and

U Mumba U Mumba (MUMBAI) is a Kabaddi team based in Mumbai, Maharashtra that plays in the Pro Kabaddi League. The franchise is currently led by Surinder singh, and will be coached by Anil Chaprana, coach of Army Kabbadi team. The team is owned by Un ...

at the Titan's home turf, Gachibowli Indoor Stadium.The winner is

Patna Pirates Patna Pirates (PTP) is a kabaddi team based in Patna, Bihar that plays in the Pro Kabaddi League. The team is led by Neeraj Kumar and coached by Ravi Shetty. Their home ground is the Patliputra Sports Complex. The Pirates are the most successf ...

Star Sports Star Sports refers to several current or former Asian sports networks owned by The Walt Disney Company: * Star Sports (East Asian TV channel) * Star Sports (Indian TV network) * Fox Sports (Southeast Asian TV network) Fox Sports (formerly ESPN ...

Pro Kabaddi, organized by Mashal Sports and Star India, in association with the

International Kabaddi Federation The International Kabaddi Federation is the international governing body of Kabaddi. Its membership comprises 31 national associations. The federation was formed in 2004. The founder and current president is Ashish Pachori from India. The other offi ...

, Asian Kabaddi Federation and the Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India is now going to be a bi-annual league with two seasons every year, promising much more action for the audiences and also encouraging them to take up to playing Kabaddi. The third season of the league will feature 60 games played on specially developed mats, in state of the art indoor stadiums across 34 days in 8 cities. Following the same ‘caravan style’ format like in the first two seasons, the league will be played at each franchise city for a duration of 4 days, where the home team will play 4 of the visiting franchises. All seven visiting franchises will play a set of away games in each city. After the opening leg in Hyderabad, the

caravan Caravan or caravans may refer to: Transport and travel *Caravan (travellers), a group of travellers journeying together **Caravanserai, a place where a caravan could stop *Camel train, a convoy using camels as pack animals *Convoy, a group of veh ...

will move to the Kanteerava Indoor Stadium, Bengaluru, followed by Netaji Indoor Stadium in Kolkata. This season, the badminton arena in the Balewadi Sports Complex, Pune will be the venue for the culmination to the first half of the league. The indoor stadium at the Patliputra Sports Complex, Patna will play host to the second half of the league with the caravan then moving to Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur on 20 February 2016. Moving on from Jaipur, the league will be played in at the Thyagaraj Indoor Stadium in Delhi and move to the home of the reigning champions, U Mumba at National Sports Club of India, Mumbai. The playoffs will return to the national capital for the semi-finals,

playoffs The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eithe ...

and the finals. Star Sports Pro Kabaddi is the only domestic Indian sports league to witness a strong rise in viewership as compared to its inaugural season. The rise in

viewership Audience measurement measures how many people are in an audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and, increasingly, web traffic on websites. Somet ...

in the second season validates the viewers’ progression from initial curiosity of season 1 to a deeper level of affinity and engagement with the aspirational avatar of Indian sport of Kabaddi. The appeal of the league continues to deliver strongly with core

urban Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of people ...

youth audiences passionately following the game. The

metro Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to: Geography * Metro (city), a city in Indonesia * A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center Public transport * Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urba ...

contribution in the first two weeks of Season 2 was 65% to overall television viewership demonstrating that the urban, millennial audiences have a strong affinity for the sport. The League has not only seen the viewership grow on TV but has also made a big impact digitally. The online viewership of Season 2 increased nearly 20 times already and over 13 million unique visitors to date. It has also been among the most talked about events on social media and has generated 5.73 billion potential impressions globally across 310,000 conversations so far.

Franchises

Stadium and locations

Points Table

League Stage

Leg 1:
Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium Regional Sports Centre, also known as Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium is a multipurpose sports centre in Kochi, Kerala, India. The stadium is situated in of land, the centre has the facilities for badminton, tennis, basketball, table tennis, swi ...
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Vizag , image_alt = , image_caption = From top, left to right: Visakhapatnam aerial view, Vizag seaport, Simhachalam Temple, Aerial view of Rushikonda Beach, Beach road, Novotel Visakhapatnam, INS Kursura submarine museum, ...

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Leg 2:
Sree Kanteerava Stadium Sree Kanteerava Outdoor Stadium, also known as Sampangi Outdoor Stadium, is a multi-purpose stadium in Bangalore, India. It houses a running track, a volleyball court, and two outdoor rock climbing walls. The stadium is owned by the Department o ...
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Bengaluru Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

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Leg 3:
Netaji Indoor Stadium The Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Indoor Stadium is an indoor arena, indoor sports arena in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The facility seats 12,000 people. This indoor stadium is located just beside the Eden Gardens. It used to host the Sunfeast O ...
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Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

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Leg 4:
Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex The Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex is a sports complex located in Pune, India. The complex is situated about 15 km from Pune downtown and 5 km from Hinjawadi. This complex was the venue for the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games, Kh ...
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Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...

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Leg 5:
Patliputra Sports Complex The Patliputra Stadium at the Patliputra Sports Complex is a multi-purpose stadium in Kankarbagh, Patna, Bihar. The first Women World Cup Kabaddi Championship was held here in its inaugural year, in which 16 countries had participated. It had al ...
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Patna Patna ( ), historically known as Pataliputra, is the capital and largest city of the state of Bihar in India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Patna had a population of 2.35 million, making it the 19th largest city in India. ...

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Leg 6:
Sawai Mansingh Stadium The Sawai Mansingh Stadium is a cricket stadium in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. It was named after Sawai Man Singh II, the former Maharaja of the state of Jaipur. It is situated at one corner of the PKMB. The stadium seats 30,000. As of July 2013 ...
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Jaipur Jaipur (; Hindi Language, Hindi: ''Jayapura''), formerly Jeypore, is the List of state and union territory capitals in India, capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Rajasthan. , the city had a pop ...

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Leg 7:
Thyagaraj Sports Complex The Thyagaraj Sport Complex is a sports stadium in New Delhi, India. It is owned by the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi and was built at the cost of . It was designed by leading architects PTM of Australia and Kapoor & Asso ...
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Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

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Leg 8:
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Indoor Stadium The Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Indoor Stadium is an indoor sports arena, in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The facility seats 5,000 people. Originally an outdoor stadium, it was established in 1957 and the foundation stone was laid by the former Chief Mini ...
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Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

Playoff Stage

All matches played at

Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium The K. D. Jadhav Indoor Hall, formerly known as the Indraprashtha Stadium and Indira Gandhi Arena (officially Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium), is located at the Indraprastha Estate in the eastern region of New Delhi. It is the largest indoor sp ...

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

Semi-final

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Third Place

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Final

Statistics

Top 5 Raiders

Top 5 Defenders

Team Statistics

Source :

Final Cash Awards

References

External links

Download Le Panga song of Amitabh Bachchan for Pro kabaddi 2016
{{Pro Kabaddi League Pro Kabaddi League seasons 2016 in Indian sport