The Archery Premier League (APL) expects to reach break-even by its second or third season and sees media rights becoming a meaningful revenue stream from around its third or fourth edition, as the franchise-based competition prepares to return with an expanded international field in October.
The Indian roster will include newly crowned Archery World Cup champion Dhiraj Bommadevara, who became the first Indian male archer to win an individual title at the season-ending competition.
Sponsorship currently contributes the bulk of the league’s revenue, APL Director Anil Kamineni told Business Standard. Season two will focus on expanding viewership and watch time while attracting more sponsors and strengthening revenue, he said.
“Season two is about building on the momentum of the inaugural season and achieving growth across all these parameters — higher viewership and watch time, more sponsors and stronger revenues,” Kamineni said. “We want to deepen audience engagement while continuing to build a sustainable commercial ecosystem around the league.”
APL targets break-even by third season
Kamineni did not disclose the cost of staging and broadcasting the inaugural edition or provide a detailed revenue split. He described the first season as an investment in establishing the league, its audience and the wider ecosystem.
“We expect to reach break-even around the second or third season as the league scales its commercial opportunities,” he said.
While sponsorship remains the primary source of income, the league expects other commercial streams to become more significant as its audience and value expand. Media rights, however, may take another few seasons to develop into a substantial source of revenue.
“We expect media rights to become a meaningful revenue stream from around the third or fourth season,” Kamineni said.
Broadcast format creates advertising inventory
One of the challenges in monetising archery is creating sufficient advertising inventory because contests are relatively short and have fewer natural breaks than sports such as cricket. According to Kamineni, the league’s two-hour broadcast window provides room for advertising without disrupting the competition.
Each two-hour event features three matches, with every match offering three to four commercial breaks of 90 seconds each. These are placed at intervals of around five to six minutes, creating approximately 10-13 commercial breaks across the broadcast.
“The APL format offers sufficient commercial inventory while keeping the viewing experience seamless,” he said.
Live matches drive APL viewership
The league’s confidence in developing archery as an annual commercial property is also based on audience data from its inaugural season.
Nearly 88 per cent of Sony LIV video views came from live matches, while live broadcasts generated almost 97 per cent of the total watch time. Viewers spent more than 3.15 million minutes watching the league, with an average viewing duration of 29 minutes.
The league’s YouTube Live broadcasts recorded 103,527 views from 63,600 unique viewers and generated 6,334 hours of watch time. The average viewing duration was 13 minutes and five seconds.
“These numbers are very encouraging. They demonstrate the keen interest audiences have in watching archery live and give us confidence that the sport can be developed as an appointment-viewing property beyond the Olympics,” Kamineni said.
More than 30 per cent of APL viewers watched through connected televisions, according to Kamineni, indicating that a section of the audience chose to follow the competition on larger screens rather than consume it primarily through mobile devices.
More than 60 per cent of Sony LIV viewers were aged between 26 and 45. YouTube data showed that viewers aged 25-44 accounted for nearly 60 per cent of the audience. India generated between 78 per cent and 89 per cent of YouTube views across the reported match days, with smaller audiences coming from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Mexico.
APL Season 2 brings 48 archers to Hyderabad
The second season will feature 36 Indian archers and 12 international competitors from 10 countries. It will be held at People’s Plaza on Hyderabad’s Necklace Road from October 8 to 18, with matches scheduled between 7.30 pm and 9.30 pm.
Dhiraj enters APL as World Cup Final champion
Dhiraj will enter the league after defeating Japan’s Nakanishi Junya 6-5 in the men’s individual recurve final in Saltillo, Mexico. With the scores tied at 5-5, Dhiraj hit a 10 in the shoot-off against Nakanishi’s nine to secure the title.
The 25-year-old became only the second Indian to win an individual crown at the World Cup Final after Dola Banerjee, who claimed the women’s recurve title in Dubai in 2007.
India’s lone representative at the 2026 World Cup Final, Dhiraj defeated Olympic medallist Berkim Tümer of Türkiye 7-1 in the quarter-finals and two-time Olympic silver medallist Jean-Charles Valladont of France by the same score in the semi-finals.
The triumph capped an impressive World Cup season for Dhiraj. He qualified for the final by winning the individual recurve title at the Antalya stage, where he also claimed mixed-team gold alongside Kumkum Mohod. Both archers will compete in the second APL season.
International stars bolster six-franchise league
The six-franchise competition will continue to feature mixed-gender teams across the recurve and compound categories. Its 15-second shot clock, five seconds shorter than the standard Olympic limit, has been retained to increase pressure on the archers and quicken the pace of the broadcast.
Alongside Dhiraj, four-time Olympian Deepika Kumari and Atanu Das are among the leading Indian recurve archers in the field. The compound roster includes Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Abhishek Verma and former world champion Ojas Pravin Deotale. All 12 members of India’s Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games squad are part of the APL ecosystem.
The overseas field includes Tokyo Olympic champion Mete Gazoz of Türkiye, Paris Olympic bronze medallist Casey Kaufhold of the United States, world No. 1 Marcus D’Almeida of Brazil and world No. 2 Ella Gibson of Great Britain. Former world champion Mike Schloesser of the Netherlands will also compete.
The Indian roster has been selected using World Archery and national rankings. Twenty-one Indian archers will return from the inaugural season, while 15 will make their APL debuts. The debutants include World Championship silver medallist Rajat Chauhan, World Cup stage winner Ridhi, World University Games gold medallist Kushal Dalal and junior national champion Kirti Sharma.
South Korean and Chinese archers on APL radar
Kamineni said the presence of international athletes would allow Indian archers to compete alongside and learn from some of the sport’s leading names. The league also wants to bring more archers from South Korea and China into future editions.
Domestic competition calendars in the two countries overlapped with the APL schedule this season, according to Kamineni.
“We are keen to see greater participation from leading archers from South Korea and China in future editions,” he said. “As the league grows, we hope to create opportunities for more athletes from these leading archery nations to participate.”
Rajputana Royals won the inaugural competition. Kamineni said the combination of franchise rivalries, international competitors, leading Indian athletes and a compact broadcast format could help transform archery from an Olympics-led sport into an annual sporting and commercial property.
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