iWorld
Rajkummar Rao encourages youth to vote in #PowerOf18 Twitter video
MUMBAI: As part of the #PowerOf18 initiative, Twitter is collaborating with renowned Indian personalities to encourage the youth of India to vote in the upcoming general elections.
Bollywood star Rajkummar Rao (@RajkummarRao) is the latest addition to be featured as part of the #PowerOf18 online video series on @TwitterIndia, joining young personalities across India to talk about what inspires them and their view of #PowerOf18. Saluting the young energy of India, in this special video on Twitter Rajkummar Rao (@RajkummarRao) is seen speaking about change, empowerment and youth, asking people to Tweet the change they want to see with #PowerOf18.
Commenting on the importance of voting, Rajkummar Rao (@RajkummarRao) said, "It is not only about us. It is about our generations to come. So question, ask for your rights, if you see a horrible infrastructure around you take a picture and put it out, ask your politicians why? Only you have the power to bring in that change and that change will come through vote.”
Past participants of the #PowerOf18 video series include singer Jassie Gill (@JassieGill), boxer Nikhat Zareen (@Nikhat_Zareen), and writer, poet and #MeTooIndia activist Mahima Kukreja (@AGirlOfHerWords).
The #PowerOf18 campaign is aimed at encouraging more youth in India to participate in civic engagement, understand the significance of their right to vote and contribute to public debate on Twitter. The campaign launch is marked by an emoji activated by the hashtag #PowerOf18 available now until June 2019.
Follow #PowerOf18 and @TwitterIndia to be a part of the conversation and community.
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.
