iWorld
Nagesh Kukunoor to direct Alt Balaji’s first original show
MUMBAI: Ekta Kapoor’s Alt Balaji has announced its first digital series. Not yet titled, the platform has roped in actor Nimrat Kaur to essay the central character and Nagesh Kukunoor to direct the series.
The fiction series has been jointly conceptualized by Balaji Telefilms joint managing director Ekta Kapoor and Samar Khan, and is produced by Endemol Shine India.
“Set in the backdrop of the Indian Army, we are presenting a riveting story that is bound to resonate with the youth of the country. Having Nimrat and Nagesh aboard, definitely takes the show to a new level. When we announced the launch of ALT Balaji, we promised to break stereotypes in storytelling; this series is a strong reinforcement of that commitment,” said Kapoor.
Kaur will be seen portraying the role of the first woman preparing to be inducted in a combat role in the Indian Army.
“Disruption, innovation and scale is the core of what we want to do. From our strategy to our content, everything on ALT Balaji will reflect this ethos. Through ALT Balaji, we are targeting urban audiences who are always on the lookout for differentiated content, one that is not available on television or even on silver screen for that matter. ALT Balaji aims to satisfy the need of this very consumer. We have just announced our first exclusive show and will be making many such exciting announcements in the weeks to come,” added Alt Balaji CEO Nachiket Pantvaidya.
Alt Balaji is aimed at disrupting the market with avantgarde and exclusive content catering to urban masses.
“Nimrat was our first choice for this and producing content for ALT Balaji at this scale will set new standards in the digital landscape,” stated Endemol Shine India managing director and CEO Deepak Dhar.
To this, Khan added,“The army and the armed forces have always fascinated me and stories with an army background draw me towards them naturally. I am excited about this opportunity to work with ALT and Endemol and am looking forward to telling a lot such stories in the future”
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.
