Grand Prix Badminton League second season will start in August

Grand Prix Badminton League: The second season of the Grand Prix Badminton League (GPBL) will be held in a new avatar in August this year. The first season which saw the top players from Karnataka with the teams mentored by the who-is-who of Indian badminton including PV Sindhu, Kidambi Srikanth, Ashwini Ponappa, Sai Praneeth, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, HS Prannoy, Chirag Shetty and Jwala Gutta, will now add an international flavour along with top ranked Indian players in the second edition.

Announcing the development, League Commissioner Prashanth Reddy said that the success of GPBL Season-1 was instrumental in elevating it to the National level. “In the wake of Premier Badminton League (PBL) not being conducted over the past three years, GPBL is being elevated to a National level event.

We were preparing for the second season of GPBL and at the insistence of players and the team owners, we are going ahead with GPBL as a National event,” said Prashanth who is also the co-owner of Bengaluru Raptors, the defending champions of PBL while adding, “We are amplifying the efforts of BAI in helping the players to earn their livelihood from the sport.

GPBL follows a completely different format and is more a made-for-television event in an attempt to popularise the game of badminton in India while giving an opportunity for the aspiring players to earn decent monies.”

GPBL intends to increase the number of teams from eight to 10 and will have a pool of over 150 players including about 25 international players who will go under the hammer. “The idea is to give players from across India a chance to rub shoulders with the best players and build a platform for these players to acclimatise to the tougher competitions abroad,” said Prashanth.

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