iWorld
Juhi Parmar shares insights on generational gap in ‘Yeh Meri Family S3
Mumbai: Amazon miniTV, Amazon’s free video streaming service, unveiled the third instalment of their beloved family drama series, Yeh Meri Family. Since its launch, the franchise has been gaining significant praise from fans and critics. The latest edition is set in the spring of 1995, immersing viewers in the nostalgia of the 90s. Narrated through the lens of 11-year-old Rishi, Yeh Meri Family Season 3 features Juhi Parmar, Anngad Raaj, Hetal Gada, and Rajesh Kumar in pivotal roles.
Juhi Parmar, who portrays the character of ‘Neerja’, a soft-hearted but stern mother to Rishi and Ritika, emphasized the significance of growing up in the 90s and what children of today are missing out on. Juhi said, “In the past, spending hours sitting together and engaging in casual conversations used to be a delightful experience among friends and kids. However, nowadays, even if they sit for just ten minutes, they feel the need for distraction, such as their phones or music, as they easily become bored. They constantly look for something to keep themselves engaged, which was not the case with children in the past. Life used to move at a slower pace, and even kids felt at ease. Unfortunately, that sense of tranquillity seems to be missing now, as children are always searching for more ways to occupy themselves”.
The new season of Yeh Meri Family is streaming exclusively on Amazon miniTV for free, accessible with the click of a button on Amazon’s shopping app, Play Store, and Fire TV.
Gaming
India’s broadcasters say no to Fifa World Cup 2026
Fifa has slashed its asking price by 65 per cent but India’s broadcasters are still not buying
MUMBAI: The world’s biggest sporting event cannot find a single taker in the world’s most sports-mad nation. Fifa’s television rights for the 2026 World Cup remain unsold in India, and the clock is ticking loudly.
To shift the property, world football’s governing body has already swallowed hard and cut its asking price from $100m to $35m, bundling in the 2030 edition as a sweetener. It has not worked. Indian broadcasters have looked at the offer, done the sums and quietly walked away.
The reasons are brutally simple. The 2026 tournament, co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, kicks off in a time zone that turns India’s primetime into a graveyard shift. Most matches will air between midnight and 7am IST, a scheduling catastrophe for advertisers chasing mass reach. The 2022 Qatar edition was a gift by comparison, with matches dropping neatly into Indian evenings. North America offers no such luxury.
The market itself has also changed beyond recognition. The merger of Star India and Viacom18 into JioStar has gutted the competitive tension that once sent sports rights prices soaring. Where rival bidders once slugged it out, there is now a single dominant buyer, and it is in no hurry. JioStar has valued the rights at roughly $25m, a full $10m below Fifa’s already-discounted floor price. That gap has so far proved unbridgeable.
Broadcasters are also nursing a ferocious cricket hangover. Between 2022 and 2023, Indian media houses committed well over $10bn to cricket rights alone, covering IPL, ICC events and BCCI domestic fixtures combined. After a binge of that scale, appetite for a football package that delivers a fraction of the ratings, in the dead of night, is close to zero.
The economics of football broadcasting make the maths even harder. Cricket, with its natural breaks every few overs, is an advertiser’s paradise. Football offers a 15-minute halftime and precious little else. Recovering a nine-figure rights fee from a single half-hour ad window is a stretch at the best of times. These are not the best of times: the Indian government’s tightening grip on real-money gaming and gambling advertising has vaporised a category that once underwrote the economics of big sporting events.
Nor is the World Cup an anomaly. Indian Super League valuations have cratered. English Premier League rights have softened across successive cycles. The cooling of football as a broadcast commodity in India is structural, not cyclical.
With the tournament opening on 11th June, Fifa is running out of road. It may yet blink and meet JioStar at $25m. Or it may go direct, streaming the entire tournament on its own platform, Fifa+, or cutting a digital deal with YouTube, and hoping that a generation of Indian football fans finds its way there without a broadcaster to guide them.
Either way, the beautiful game’s Indian chapter is looking decidedly ugly.
