Gaming
Bangkok levels up for VCT Ascension Pacific 2025
MUMBAI: Game on in Bangkok! The city’s turning into a virtual warzone as VCT Ascension Pacific 2025 kicks off, bringing ten elite VALORANT teams face-to-face in a high-stakes shootout for a ticket to the 2026 Pacific League.
From 14 to 26 October, the Imperial Samrong Convention Hall will witness the region’s sharpest aimers and coolest strategists clash for two golden berths in next year’s league and a share of the 100,000 dollars prize pool.
Representing South Asia, Velocity Gaming takes centre stage after clinching a 3–1 victory over S8UL in the Omen Valorant Challengers South Asia qualifiers. The team now sets its sights on conquering Asia-Pacific giants like Boom Esports, Full Sense, and Riddle Order, all gunning for Ascension glory.
The tournament features two groups of five teams each, battling it out in best-of-three matches before the top six advance to the playoffs. The tension will peak on 25 and 26 October with the upper and lower bracket finals, where only two teams will ascend to the VCT Pacific League 2026.
Fans can catch the live action in Bangkok or stream every headshot and heartbreak across multiple languages online, courtesy of Acer, Intel, and Benq. For those in Thailand, tickets are available via Ticketmelon, search for “Valorant Ascension Pacific 2025” and grab your seat before they’re gone.
The countdown to chaos has begun, and in Bangkok this fortnight, only the boldest will level up.
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.
