Exclusive: The People’s Sportmaker- How Tenzing Niyogi Is Turning Childhood Games Into National Culture

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In India, the distance between a playground game and a professional sport can be vast. Somewhere between dusty school fields and bright broadcast lights, most games simply disappear. But for Tenzing Niyogi, the mission has been to close that gap - to take a sport millions of Indians grew up playing and give it the stage, the structure, and the heroes it deserves.

And that sport is Kho Kho.

For Niyogi, building a sports league has never been about spectacle alone. It's about creating a system where athletes, audiences, and culture reinforce each other.

"When you build up a sports league, it is so much more than building a business model, distribution, you know, all of that put together," he said.
"The last bit what I said actually comes first, athlete first."

That phrase: athlete first, sits at the centre of how he thinks about sport.

"If you can specify that target as a sports investor and a sports marketer, it helps the sportsman to sort of work around it and build a pathway mentally and physically."

The idea is simple but powerful: a league isn't just a tournament. It's a ladder.

From childhood nostalgia to national television

One of Niyogi's sharpest insights into sport has little to do with tactics or stadiums. It begins inside a living room.

"The remote controller for a particular household belongs to the woman, because at eight o'clock, she turns on all these GEC network," he explained. "So if I could convert them in seeing the sport that they have played in their childhood, and trigger a bit of nostalgia, then I think the entire school level familiarity... all of these things were sort of a uniquely scalable."

Kho Kho is exactly that kind of sport. Nearly every Indian child has played it at some point. The challenge was never familiarity - it was reintroducing the game in a format that modern audiences would watch.

"The sport is always the king and the sportsmen are always the heroes," Niyogi said. "If the format of the game hits the audience, then 85% of your battle is won."

Designing a sport for the attention economy

Modern sport competes not just with other games but with an entire universe of entertainment. Social media, streaming platforms, short-form video; attention has become the scarcest resource.

Niyogi recognises that reality."If you can capture my imagination in those seven seconds, that is how a sport needs to be," he said.

"It's the era of seven-seconder, 10-seconder, quick... music is being consumed fast."

Flashy opening ceremonies might bring curiosity, but they don't sustain leagues.

"We can bring as many celebrities to an opening ceremony of a particular sports league, any sports. But day two, if the format of the game hits the audience, then 85% of your battle is won."

The athlete and the sport must ultimately carry the story.

Building dreams through Ultimate Kho Kho

That philosophy shaped the creation of Ultimate Kho Kho: the professional league that transformed Kho Kho from a schoolyard pastime into a televised sport.

For Niyogi, the numbers tell one story, but the human impact tells another.

"There are upward of what 17 to 20 lakh Kho Kho athletes who dream because of Ultimate Kho Kho," he said.

"That's the human impact... you give that platform and then Kho Kho World Cup happens... 24 countries play and the women and the men there just go for the kill and win the damn cup."

The cultural moment he describes is strikingly simple.

"That woman sitting in a khatia, sitting in a chaarpai... has sampled the sport. And she will finally say during Ultimate Kho Kho, 'main Ultimate, main Kho Kho dekh rahi hoon, maini khela hai yeh sport. Aapne khela hai?' to the husband."

In that moment, the sport stops being something distant. It becomes personal.

Why grassroots leagues matter

A professional league cannot survive without a deep pipeline of players. That's why Niyogi places enormous importance on state competitions and grassroots structures.

"State leagues are very, very critical," he said.

"So what you're doing is you're actually forcing the cultural pathway to become more robust for that one particular sport."

Local leagues produce the next generation of stars. They give young players a reason to believe a career is possible.

"If you can specify that target as a sports investor and a sports marketer, it helps the sportsman to sort of work around it and build a pathway mentally and physically."

Without that pathway, talent fades long before it reaches the top.

Remembering the athlete behind the spectacle

Niyogi speaks about sport not only as a builder but as someone who lived it as a young athlete.

"For every sportsman... when you reach the 19th year of your age, and if you've not done too much, then there's a big huge question mark, which looms over our heads."

That uncertainty is precisely what professional structures can solve.

"At the end of the day, they are the commodity," he said.
"And unfortunately, in India, barring cricket, every other sport does not treat their sportsmen as heroes."

In his view, leagues must reverse that equation.

Athletes should come first.

Six balls, twelve runs

At its heart, Niyogi's philosophy about building sport sounds almost like cricket strategy.

"What have you given back to the country?" he asks. Then he offers the metaphor that guides his approach:

"It's always six balls 12 runs. You either hit two sixes and win it or you take six doubles and win it. That's the mindset."

In other words, progress in sport can come through bold leaps or steady accumulation.

But either way, the goal remains the same: build a system where a child playing Kho Kho in a schoolyard can imagine one day playing it under stadium lights.

And perhaps, somewhere in a living room, someone watching on television will smile and say: I played that game too.