News Broadcasting
ESPN Star Sports extends Spanish soccer rights till 2009
MUMBAI: Sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports has extended its multi-year agreement for exclusive broadcast rights of the Spanish Soccer league in India till 2009.
This further strengthens ESS’ coverage of international football in India, including rights to broadcast the English Premier League, FA English Football package, the Asian Football Confederation package, in adddition to the Fifa World Cup 2006 coverage live on its network.
Announcing the acquisition, ESPN India head RC Venkateish said, “We’re pleased to partner with Sportfive once again for broadcasting the league in India. Our effort to build affinity for Spanish Primera Liga has started paying rich dividends. We expect to grow the league even further in the coming three years.”
The Spanish Primera Liga boasts two of the best known clubs in the world in Real Madrid and Barcelona. ESS has been making special efforts to promote international soccer in the country with live screenings, building viewer affinity for international leagues like the Spanish league and growing knowledge among Indian viewers are some of the steps ESPN Star Sports has taken to enhance the passion associated with the game.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
