iWorld
Girliyapa launches Mr. & Mrs. Season 2 in association with Livspace
MUMBAI: Following the success of its first season, India's leading women-centric entertainment channel Girliyapa from the house of The Viral Fever launches Mr. & Mrs. Season 2 in association with India's most admired home interiors brand Livspace. Rooted in contemporary urbaneness, Mr. & Mrs. captures the ethos of the marital life of a young couple through relatable and captivating moments depicted throughout the series. The series further touches upon the special bond and quirks that couples share during the process of turning their house into a home. Premiered on 7 January , Mr. & Mrs. Season 2 is a weekly digital series that is available on TVFPlay and Girliyapa’s YouTube.
Written by its lead actor Biswapati Sarkar who plays Sanju and Nidhi Bisht as Madhu, also one of its lead characters, Mr. & Mrs. is a five-episode humour filled series. The show takes away from the standard one-dimensional soap and portrays the real challenges faced by young married couples in modern India. Mr. & Mrs. attempts to create a refreshing experience by essentially bringing forth a modern lifestyle to make every moment worth living in the married reality.
On launching Season 2, one of Girliyapa’s most successful shows, Girliyapa channel head Sarita Jain said, “Mr. & Mrs. has been one of our marquees shows on Girliyapa. Season on season, the series continues to add a humorous take on marriage hood that is relatable to contemporary couples. One common tying factor that all couples share after transitioning into married life is the need for a good home. Livspace happens to be India’s most admired brand for home interior solutions and was a perfect fit for this new season. We are very excited about this partnership and are certain that our viewers will enjoy this season just like the previous one.”
Livspace brand marketing head Varun A R added, “We want to connect with our core audience, through our partnership with TVF, and educate them about the major problems, homeowners face while working with unorganized players, for their home interiors. One of our key goals is category creation for a full-stack home interior solution like Livspace, bringing about a change in how individuals perceive the process of doing their home interiors. We thoroughly enjoyed working with the TVF Girliyapa team to integrate this message and create a compelling script that addressed the challenges faced by consumers in our category. We look forward to the response from the viewers of Mr. & Mrs.
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.
