CHENNAI: With just about a month to go for the FIFA World Cup 2026, there is still no official broadcaster confirmed for two of the biggest countries in the world, India and China.
In an ideal world, the combination of the most viewed sport in the world and two of the most populated countries should guarantee blockbuster success. Even more so in 2026, when the World Cup has now expanded from 32 teams to 48 teams, with the total matches growing to 106.
However, that is far away from the ground reality despite there being a record 32 million viewers who tuned in to watch Argentina lift the 2022 World Cup.
To understand the economics behind the current situation, you will have to track back to the 2022 event, where Viacom18 paid an approx of $62 million for digital rights in India, which included television rights with the games being aired for free on JioCinema.
However, for the 2026 and 2030 World Cup, the FIFA were eyeing $100 million for broadcast rights in India. Despite two of India’s biggest conglomerates under the same umbrella, India’s reported offer to host the World Cup was at $20 million significantly lower.
Despite a fan base of 200 million, which accounted to 49.8% of all viewing on digital and social platforms globally, China Central Television (CCTV) wasn’t too keen on paying FIFA the reported $300 million, and weren’t even on board at a reduced price of $120-150 million.
For the uninitiated, the upcoming World Cup will be in North and
South America, which means that most of the Asian audience would have to stay awake at odd hours in the night to catch some of the biggest stars in action. Most of the games will start past midnight, and some of the games even at a ghastly 3:30 AM for the audience in India.
While that in itself reduces most of the casual audience, the other big reason behind the nodeal at the moment is the lack of advertisers. Now, an advertiser wouldn’t be ready to pay a substantial amount for such low returns, especially since the games would start that late in the night. China is 2:30 hours behind their Asian counterparts, making things worse.
Just to put more context to things, Indian Super League, the country’s premier franchise football tournament saw a -97%, with a drop from INR 550 crore to just 8.62 crore which FanCode secured. The state of the sport in the country is such that barring Premier League (JioHotstar), La Liga (FanCode), there aren’t too many leagues which are broadcasted in the country.
Fans. For most parts of the previous years, where there were no legal platforms to watch La Liga, Serie A or Ligue 1, the fans had to resort to illegal means, or watch them using VPN (Virtual Private Network). If the World Cup does take a similar deviation like other leagues, then it would leave the hardcore fans to resort to such measures.
Barring fans, the lack of an official broadcaster in the country would definitely have a knock-on effect on the sport’s popularity in the country, with almost 371 million people between the ages of 15 to 29. Even if not for the sport’s popularity, it would also discourage a lot of young budding footballers in the country, especially when an event of such scale is being sidetracked.
Football as it is, is already at a crossroad in the country, and if no deal is struck, it could worsen.
