India, May 23 -- Table tennis in India tends to largely be associated with the metro cities, from where a big chunk of the country's top players also come.

However, television viewership pattern of last year's Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT), India's TT league that will begin its sixth season from May 31 in Ahmedabad, threw an interesting curveball. From the uptick in the total watch time from 129 million minutes to 167 million minutes during the fifth season, states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh contributed nearly 40% through the regional language feed, as per TV viewership data provided by the organisers.

"We started (UTT) thinking that it will only be the metros, but we realised that at any given point of tim...