Gaming
Nazara’s Fusebox Games brings ‘The Traitors’ to life on mobile in 2026
MUMBAI: Trust no one, not even your phone. Nazara Technologies’ UK-based studio, Fusebox Games, is set to bring the tension and trickery of The Traitors to mobile screens with an interactive game inspired by the global reality sensation. Launching in 2026 on ios and Android, The Traitors: Interactive Game will let players plot, deceive, and survive their way through a story filled with twists and betrayals.
Fusebox Games, the studio behind the popular Love Island: The Game and Big Brother: The Game, has acquired worldwide interactive rights to IDTV’s hit format The Traitors through a deal with All3media International. The partnership combines Fusebox’s storytelling expertise with the format’s irresistible mix of suspense and strategy.
The new title is part of The Traitors’ growing global empire, which now spans 30 territories across six continents. Recent highlights include The Traitors India on Prime Video, which opened to strong ratings and quickly secured a second season. Other new versions are in production across Brazil, Mexico, Mongolia and Ukraine, while the BBC prepares to debut The Celebrity Traitors, featuring Stephen Fry, Alan Carr, Tom Daley and Charlotte Church.
All3media International VP of licensing Jason Easy, said, “Fusebox Games has repeatedly shown how to translate blockbuster television into genre-leading mobile gameplay. Their vision for The Traitors will allow fans around the world to experience the addictive tension of treachery and betrayal whenever they choose.”
Fusebox Games CEO Terry Lee added, “We’re thrilled to bring The Traitors to mobile players everywhere. It’s a format full of drama, strategy and unforgettable moments, making it a perfect fit for interactive fiction. Our team is already working to capture all the suspense and emotion fans love.”
Nazara Technologies joint MD and CEO Nitish Mittersain said, “Fusebox’s mastery of narrative design, combined with the global pull of The Traitors, gives us an exciting opportunity to expand Nazara’s presence in premium interactive storytelling.”
With the Traitors: Interactive Game, players will finally get to experience the thrill of deceit, loyalty and survival for themselves. The only rule? Trust no one.
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.
