iWorld
Blogmint launches #BloggersDreamTeam with Harsha Bhogle
MUMBAI: Blogmint, India’s automated marketplace that connects brands and bloggers, and a part of TO THE NEW Ventures, has launched the #BloggerDreamTeam campaign with Harsha Bhogle. The campaign aims at discovering and recognizing the emerging blogging, vlogging and micro-blogging talent in India.
Bhogle, a cricket expert and a sports evangelist, joined hands with Blogmint to acknowledge the budding social influencers in India and hand-pick his #BloggerDreamTeam. With Cricket World Cup 2015 fever gripping India, the campaign provides bloggers a platform to channelize their opinion around all aspects of the game – from fashion statements made by today’s cricketers to the impact of technological enhancements on the game.
Bhogle said, “The internet and social media have thrown up opportunities like never before and have allowed skill to meet opportunity. Blogmint is the perfect platform to empower bloggers and showcase these skills.”
Social media has become ubiquitous with young India and with that we are witnessing a new set of social media stars. Influencer Marketing, which was driven by Bollywood and sports celebrity endorsement, is now being increasingly driven by Social Influencers, which includes celebrity bloggers, YouTubers and Twitteraties. However, there aren’t any platforms in India, which connect these celebrities with brands in an automated and transparent fashion. “This is the gap that Blogmint aims to fill. Dream Team with Harsha Bhogle is an excellent opportunity for Bloggers to express opinions on the on-going cricket World Cup and at the same time showcase the versatility of their writing talent by combining cricket with themes including food, technology, lifestyle amongst others. #BloggerDreamTeam is one of the many initiatives that Blogmint plans to launch in order to engage the social influencers in India,” said Blogmint CEO Irfan Khan.
Bloggers can participate in the contest by visiting the following page – https://www.blogmint.com/HarshaBhogleDreamTeam.
“Dream Team with Harsha Bhogle is an excellent opportunity for Bloggers to express opinions on the on-going Cricket World Cup and at the same time showcase the versatility of their writing talent by combining cricket with themes including food, technology, lifestyle amongst others. #BloggerDreamTeam is one of the many initiatives that Blogmint plans to launch in order to engage the social influencers in India” he added.
“I am delighted to be associated with Blogmint’s Blogger Dream Team initiative. It’s a perfect platform for Bloggers which empowers their writing skills” asserted Harsha Bhogle.
Bloggers can participate in the contest by visiting the following page – https://www.blogmint.com/HarshaBhogleDreamTeam.
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.
