iWorld
Shemaroo Entertainment brings Lalbaugcha Raja to devotees’ homes
Mumbai: On the back of its successful, decade-long association with Lalbaugcha Raja, this year too Shemaroo Entertainment, India’s leading content powerhouse, has announced that the festivities and poojas at Lalbaugcha Raja would be telecasted live across Shemaroo’s online platforms including their own OTT ShemarooMe. The telecast would bring the “LIVE Darshan” of Lalbaugcha Raja to the homes of devotees. Shemaroo will also distribute the content of Lalbaugcha Raja (video and images) to all leading telecom operators across the country as well as other online and DTH platforms.
Consumers can download the ShemarooMe app to enjoy the feed of the LIVE Darshan and Maha Aarti of Lord Ganesha across screens whenever and wherever they are. Viewers can also access the telecast on Shemaroo’s subscriptions services on all DTH operators. It will also be available on Shemaroo’s Hindu devotional app ‘Shemaroo Bhakti’. Simply give a missed call on 9983371222 to download the app to watch Live Darshan free without any additional cost.
Consumers who wish to enjoy the LIVE Darshan on their TV sets will have to subscribe to the devotional service from their DTH operators. LIVE Darshan will be available on Airtel – Om Shakti (Service No 674), Tata Sky – Devotion (Service No 1051), Dish – Bhakti Active (Service No 1069) & D2H (Service No 1203). Shemaroo will also distribute the live feed via some selected mobile apps & websites to reach out to maximum audience.
Shemaroo Entertainment, CEO, Hiren Gada said, “We are glad that this year again, we have associated with the Lalbaug Ganeshostav Mandal to bring the Lord’s blessings to consumers’ homes. With the pandemic restricting crowds and the requirement of social distancing, we hope that the live telecast will allow people who are unable to come personally to take Darshan online. We are glad that we could harness the power of technology to bring the Ganesh Utsav celebrations live from the most famous pandal to them.”
Lalbaugcha Raja Sarvajanik Ganeshostav Mandal, secretary, Sudhir Salvi added, “Our association with Shemaroo goes back to over a decade. The tie-up enables millions of people to take Darshan of the Lord even if they are unable to visit. This year, with the pandemic, we need to be more careful and adhere to the social distancing norms and hence the Live darshan will enable millions of people who can’t visit Lalbaug to take bappa’s blessings. Shemaroo’s reach across platforms will let devotees enjoy the Live darshan of Lalbaugcha Raja in their own comfort & we are thankful to Shemaroo for this support.”
Shemaroo also won the ‘Best LIVE Streaming’ award at vIDEA 2019 for Shemaroo Bhakti Facebook page for the above offering. There was a hiatus in 2020 due to the pandemic, and Lalbaugcha Raja returns this year.
About Shemaroo Entertainment:
Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd is a leading global content powerhouse, which has played a pioneering role in the arena of content ownership, aggregation, and distribution. Shemaroo has been a core part of the Bollywood Industry and has managed to maintain many relationships with the best production houses over the years.
With a diverse and growing collection of over 3700 titles, Shemaroo has offered premium content and services to customers in more than 30 countries, across several Indian languages. With the brand in existence for over five decades, Shemaroo continues to redefine itself to respond to the disrupting consumer environment, by delivering content across age groups in genres such as movies, comedy, devotional and kids.
Shemaroo also launched its own video streaming platform ShemarooMe in 2018 and recently strengthened its outreach by entering the broadcast business with Shemaroo MarathiBana, a Free-To-Air Marathi movie channel and Shemaroo TV, a Hindi General Entertainment, Free-To-Air channel that offers an exciting bouquet of highest TRP rated daily soaps to entertain the viewers of the HSM belt.
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.
