Gaming
Celebrate the Spirit of Christmas with Anime Times! Anime Streaming Service “Anime Times” Collaborates with PAX, Chennai’s Biggest Anime Event!
Delhi/Chennai, India: This Christmas season, Anime Times is bringing exciting campaigns and exclusive merchandise to anime fans across India. The leading anime streaming platform will host booths at two major events:
. December 21-22: Nexus Citywalk Mall, Delhi
. Phoenix Market City, Chennai: Part of the BIGGEST ANIME FESTIVAL “PAX”
Visitors to the booths can participate in exciting campaigns to win guaranteed gifts, including Naruto merchandise and Anime Times original T-shirts. Additionally, Anime Times has teamed up with Indo Nissin Foods Pvt.Ltd. to offer free “Nissin Geki Korean Ramen” to fans who follow both brands on social media.
Building a Thriving Anime Culture in India
Anime Times has actively collaborated with local anime clubs, Japanese culture events, and industry leaders to foster a vibrant anime ecosystem. Earlier this year, the platform partnered with COSCON, Nagpur’s biggest anime event, to deliver unique experiences to fans. Through initiatives like these, Anime Times continues to bridge India and Japan’s shared love for anime.
About Anime Times: The Ultimate Anime Destination for India
Launched in India in December 2023, Anime Times offers a curated selection of popular anime titles such as Attack on Titan, Detective Conan, and Naruto. The service streams select titles almost simultaneously with their broadcast in Japan and has recently begun offering Hindi-dubbed versions, making anime more accessible to Indian audiences.
Anime Times is available as an add-on subscription on Prime Video for INR 69 per month for Prime members. For a limited time, the first month is available for just INR 39.
Official Website: https://animetimes-global.com/
Official Instagram: https://instagram.com/animetimes_in/
Official YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/animetimes-ch
Overview of “Anime Times” available via add-on subscription on Prime Video in India
Add-on Subscription Name: Anime Times
Launch Date: December 12, 2023
Subscription Price: Available to Prime members for INR 69 per month, with a special offer of INR 39 for the first month!
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.
