DTH
Indya.com gears up for cricket World Cup
MUMBAI: Played with passion! Followed with obsession!
With the cricket World Cup scheduled to kick off in less than a month’s time indya.com, which is running the official website www.cricketworldcup.com as the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) web partner, is starting to make a push.
The site officially launches on Monday, 26 February.
Information available with indiantelevision.com indicates that one presenting sponsor and four associate sponsors have been signed up so far for this year’s highlight cricket event.
It was last year that Star inked a deal with the ICC to run its sites for the Champions Trophy and next month’s World Cup. Indya.com business head Sumant Kasliwal claims that its Champions Trophy site got three million unique users. In total there were over a billion hits, a lot of which, not surprisingly came from India. One million downloads took place and there were 100,000 registered users.
For the Champions Trophy the site got 230 million page views. Kasliwal says that for the World Cup the site is expecting a billion page views during the event. “Our application Matchcast (which is a scorecard) has been expanded upon. It will be interactive. The aim is to give the consumer a complete experience. One can get match highlights, fall of wickets package, interactive contests. There will be live chat during the game. Users can comment on the state of the game. Our video content will include highlights from the previous World Cups. Other sites (as per the ICC diktat) are not allowed to show cricket videos.”
Kasliwal also mentions another application – the Simulator. The visitor can view a graphical representation of what is happening ball by ball. He says that from a technological point of view it is a challenge. For each over two dozen parameters are taken into account. The recording takes place on the fly.
There will also be expert analysis of each match. Prominent names are in the process of getting signed up. There will also be interviews with players and the captains. For the captains there is a section Captainspeak. Kasliwal says that it is in the process of tying up with speakers.
It is also doing an interactive Voice Of the World Cup initiative. The contest kicks off next month. Here a clip of India’s match versus Pakistan in the previous World Cup is featured. Sachin basically hammers Shoaib. One can visit the section and provide a commentary recording. The winner who will be chosen by the public and a team of experts gets to do commentary for the semi finals and the final for the site.
The site will also have a picture gallery courtesy gettyimages. For fun one can participate in games. One game that will shortly be launched is called Pick The Score. This is a prediction game and one has to guess scores. There will also be a fantasy game. Here one chooses a dream team for each match and one scores depending on how well the individual players are faring.
The site will also have quizzes, an ICC contests suite. There will also be pages dedicated to teams and players, merchandise that can be ordered. In some countries like New Zealand, Hong Kong, Korea, Germany, France the site will offer for a fee live streaming of matches. In India highlights and the other earlier mentioned features will be given for free.
GroupM COO South Asia Vikram Sakuja says that at first the agency was not sure how the product would turn out. However he is happy that for the Champions Trophy the site got a quarter of a billion page views. “I am glad that GroupM saw this potential and got some of our brands like Lufthansa to work with this exciting media offering.”
DTH
DD Free Dish e-auction heats up with 26 MPEG-2 slots sold in two days
Hindi movies, GEC and news dominate; Star Utsav Movies tops Day 2 at Rs 213.45 crore
MUMBAI- The bidding war on DD Free Dish is turning into a blockbuster and the slots are selling faster than popcorn at interval. Prasar Bharati’s 8th annual MPEG-2 e-auction delivered another strong day on Tuesday, with 18 more channels securing spots across movies, regional music and news buckets, taking the two-day total to 26.
Day 2 belonged to the movies and news categories. In Bucket A (Hindi Movies), Star Utsav Movies led the pack at Rs 213.45 crore, pipped only narrowly by Zee Action at Rs 213.4 crore. Goldmines landed at Rs 13.35 crore and Zee Anmol at Rs 13.3 crore, showing razor-thin price bands and fierce competition. Bucket B saw Zee Bioscope top at Rs 10.6 crore, Bhojpuri Cinema Rs 10.5 crore, B4U Bhojpuri Rs 10.2 crore, while Showbox, Unique TV and B4U Music each closed at Rs 10.25 crore.
News channels in Bucket C stayed tightly bunched: NDTV, Aaj Bharat, Zee News and India TV all secured slots at Rs 8.6 crore, with News Nation and ABP News slightly higher at Rs 8.65 crore. Bucket D rounded out with Russia Today at Rs 9.75 crore and GTC Punjabi at Rs 7.92 crore.
Day 1 had already set a premium tone, with eight slots snapped up – six in Bucket A+ (Hindi/Urdu GEC, starting reserve Rs 15 crore) and two in Bucket A (Hindi/Urdu Movies, starting Rs 12 crore). Sony PAL topped Day 1 winners at Rs 16.55 crore, Star Utsav Rs 16.25 crore, Shemaroo TV Rs 16.35 crore, Zee Anmol, Colors Rishtey and Sun Neo at Rs 16.40 crore each. Sony WAH took a Bucket A slot at Rs 13.95 crore and Zee Anmol Cinema at Rs 13.45 crore.
The surge reflects broadcasters’ hunger for DD Free Dish’s estimated 43–45 million rural and semi-urban households, where Hindi GEC and movies remain advertising goldmines.
The auction runs under the revised E-auction Methodology 2025 (amended 9 January 2026), with escalating reserves – Round 2 Bucket A+ at Rs 16 crore, Round 3 Bucket A at Rs 13 crore – and stricter eligibility to weed out speculative bids. Channels must be operational, available in the relevant language, and already carried on at least one private DTH, DD Free Dish or registered MSO.
With premium genres flying off the shelf, the coming rounds will test how deep pockets really are as reserves climb and tactical down-bidding gets harder. In India’s largest free-to-air universe, these auctions aren’t just about slots – they’re about who gets to stay on the screen that reaches deepest into the heartland.
