Gwalior, Aug 5
In just one season of the Pro Panja League, India’s franchise armwrestling league has already crossed over 1.2 billion views across social media. With season 2 set to kick-off at the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Training Centre for Disability Sports on Tuesday, the Panja craze has already taken over the city of Gwalior with fans expected to come in numbers.
In an exclusive conversation with IANS, co-founder of the PPL, and president of the People’s Armwrestling Federation of India, Preeti Jhangiani spoke on the growing craze of the sport, what fans can expect from PPL season 2 and also revealed talks of a potential Pro Panja event in the United Kingdom.
“Arm wrestling is as it was known in the world, but today the world knows it as Panja and I think this is something we've managed to create after years of hard work. It's not happened overnight and after years of research, not just on the sport of arm wrestling, but also on the business and the sport of leagues. Many leagues have cropped up, but we have to see where the viewership lies and I think those are the leagues that will actually sustain.
“ I'm very proud to say that in our first season itself, we had 32 million unique viewers. I think very few leagues in their first season can say something like that. So that, plus our social media, currently stands at over 1.2 billion views, which is across Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, which I think is huge as well,” Preeti told IANS.
PPL Season 2 has chosen the scenic Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh as the host city for its highly anticipated upcoming season. Following the success of Season 1 this decision is consistent with the league’s strategy to boost and expand sports appeal across the Indian Map and to make the tournament accessible in iconic Indian destinations, significantly boosting event partnership and sporting talent participation. The decision to host Season 2 in Gwalior was likely influenced by the venue's previous experience hosting the Pro Panja Ranking Tournament in 2022.
With the second season set to kick-off on Tuesday, Preeti spoke on what the fans can expect in the tournament.
“They can expect a lot of fun, exciting, thrilling matches, of course, very aggressive matches and some very aggressive, interesting matchups. Plus, of course, there is going to be a lot of masti-mazaak as well. I think we've established Panja as not just a real sport, but also something that can be very exciting and very thrilling and a lot of fun in it,” she added.
Recently, a week-long sports delegation visit by FICCI’s Sports Committee to the United Kingdom resulted in several significant engagements. The delegation worked on developing sporting relationships between India and the UK brought together prominent stakeholders from the Indian and British sports sectors.
When asked on how those talks went, Preeti revealed the fruitful discussions that took place and teased that a Pro Panja event in the U.K is on the cards very soon.
“I'm also a member of FICCI Sport in India, chaired by P.K. S.V. Sagar of GMR Group and we had a fantastic collaboration, talks about collaborations between Manchester and India. and there is something that's very exciting coming up. In fact, I think you will very, very soon see something in the UK with Pro Panja.
“There were so many people who were very, very excited about armwrestling and what's happening around the world and we spoke about a lot of other different things, bringing sports, sciences. We visited a lot of colleges there and seeing whatever collaborations there were between students in Manchester and India as well,” concluded Preeti.
