iWorld
Goti Soda Season 5’ premieres on ShemarooMe
Mumbai: “Goti Soda” is returning for its fifth season. After the massive success of the previous seasons, fans are in for even more laughs and entertaining experience with its new theme, ‘Nava Rajwadi Flavour Ma.’ The latest season of the popular Gujarati web series is set to premiere on 12 September 2024, exclusively on ShemarooMe.
‘Goti Soda’ has captivated audiences with its unique blend of humor and emotion, and Season 5 takes the beloved series to new heights. This season is set to bring twice the laughter with two uproarious storylines. First, Ayush’s life hilariously unravels when his sister drops the bombshell that he’s adopted, setting off a chain of comedic adventures. Meanwhile, Pappu cancels a family resort trip to join a donation drive and stage ‘Mughal-e-Azam.’ He gets a director for free, but the director’s escalating demands drive up production costs. As tensions rise, Pappu’s clever plan to outsmart the director leads to unforgettable funny moments. Featuring the beloved cast—Sanjay Goradia, Prarthi Dholakia, and Pratham Bhatt—and helmed by Divyes Pathak, this season is packed with fresh humor and inventive twists.
Goradia shared his excitement: “We’re beyond thrilled to bring Goti Soda back for Season 5! The love and response we received for the previous Seasons were incredible, and we knew we had to make this season even better. The new season is sure to provide an exhilarating and humorous experience that both longtime fans and new audiences will enjoy. With our amazing cast, we’re ready to bring the humor and chemistry our fans adore. Under the direction of Divyes Pathak, we’ve packed this season with its signature wit, engaging characters and relatable scenarios. We can’t wait for everyone to dive into the fun.”
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.
