Inclusion of Kabaddi in Olympics

There are a couple of different paths to inclusion in the Olympics. The traditional way is for a sport's international federation to petition the IOC, but the alternative is for local organizing committees to push favored sports in their country. This local process was formalized in 2014 under the " Olympic Agenda 2020 ," which introduced sweeping changes to the Olympic movement, including reduced bidding costs, a digital Olympic channel and a more flexible program allowing for the introduction of new sports.
Tokyo 2020 is the first Games to take advantage of the changes. Giving local organizing committees more influence to introduce popular local sports makes hosting the Games more desirable at a time when many cities have been wary to make Olympic bids due to the costs. The new sports can boost TV ratings and attract more sponsors.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic committee listed the following criteria for new sports: added value; youth appeal; attractiveness for TV, media and the general public; gender equality; minimum impact on the number of events and/or quotas, infrastructure and operational costs and complexity.

Firstly, talking about added value and attractiveness for TV let me tell you that few years back no one have predicted the meteoric growth of India's own sport, Kabaddi. The Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) saw players from across the globe fight for regional pride and for the first time since the sport's inception, there was big money involved. The 2016 Kabaddi World Cup started on 7th October 2016 where 12 nations competed against each other to win the title. The tournament was organized by the International Kabaddi Federation. Final was played between India and Iran. People across the nations had their eye on the match. So we can conclude that kabbadi do have added values as well as attractiveness for TV viewers.

Secondly, speaking about youth appeal, media and the general public we can say that after the Kabbadi World Cup 2016 i believe that all the participating nations as well as the youth,media and general public across the nations would stake their claims for inclusion of kabaddi in the 2024 Olympics.

Thirdly, Kabbadi is a game for women as well as men. So there is no question for gender inequality.

Finally, talking about the infrastructure, kabbadi ground has different dimensions according to the Gender. Generally, these dimensions include 13 meters x 8 meters for Men and 12 meters x 6 meters for Women. So, being a simple game,with just a few rules kabbadi doesn't need much time as well as space. There is no question regarding its impact on other games, as its less time taking game . And its operational costs won't be higher than any other games.

Inclusion of Kabbadi in the Olympics is as simple as making a cup of tea. But its possible only when you guys will share and make everyone aware.

–Written by Bijoy Sharma