iWorld
Netflix’s to showcase its global fan event Tudum on 24 September
Mumbai: OTT platform Netflix has announced that its global virtual event Tudum is back. The event that it said garnered over 25 million views from Netflix fans in 184 countries around the world last year is returning on 24 September 2022 with five global events in 24 hours. At 11 a.m IST (10:30 p.m PT 23 September), fans will be treated to a fun look at what’s ahead from India.
On 24 September, Tudum will span four continents with five events, taking fans on a trip around the world. The day will have exclusive news, never-before-seen footage, trailers, and first looks, as well as interviews with Netflix’s biggest stars and creators. The free virtual event is a celebration of Netflix fandom and is dedicated to sharing the scoop on over 100 fan favourite shows, films and specials from across the globe.
At 11:00 a.m KST (7:00 p.m. PT September 23), Tudum kicks off with a show out of Korea. At 10 a.m PT, fans will get exclusive news from shows and movies coming out of the US and Europe, as well as an additional event which previews the great entertainment coming from Latin America.
Finally at 1 p.m. JST 25 September (9 p.m. PT September 24), stars from Japan will close out Tudum with a celebration of Japanese entertainment.
Tudum is a Netflix Global Fan Event that will be available across Netflix YouTube channels in a number of different languages.
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.
