The now defunct Premier Hockey League (PHL) was a professional league competition for field Hockey

Field hockey

Field Hockey, or Hockey, is a team sport in which a team of players attempts to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking a ball into an opposing team's goal using sticks...

 clubs in the top division of the Indian hockey system. There were seven teams in the PHL. The competition was held every year from 2005 till 2008.
The tournament was initiated to revive interest in the sport which was losing spectator interest to cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 in recent times. Hockey is India's National Sport, with the country having won a record eight Olympic

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

 Gold medals and having lifted the World Cup

Hockey World Cup

The Hockey World Cup is an international field hockey competition organised by the International Hockey Federation . The tournament was started in 1971...

 once.

One of the main reasons for the waning popularity of the existing domestic competition was the rise of corporate teams such as Indian Airlines and Punjab & Sind Bank which do not have a steady fan following.