Gaming
Revenant Esports makes history at Brawl Stars World Finals
Mumbai: Revenant Esports, among India’s most prominent esports organisations, has scripted history to qualify for the Brawl Stars World Finals 2023. This makes the org the first Indian team ever to make it to the biggest stage for Brawl Stars esports, where they will not only be fighting for national glory but also for a share of a prize pool of more than $750,000.
Revenant Esports went into the Brawl Stars Championship Last-Chance Qualifier in Katowice, Poland as an underdog but was able to put up a dominant performance. They took down Rising Sun Esports SEA and Datos F/A in back-to-back games to place first in their Group. Ultimately, they faced the formidable Reconic Esports SA for the Brawl Stars World Finals 2023 slot.
While Revenant Esports weren’t able to close the first round in the best-of-five series, they came back from behind to earn the Golden Ticket with a 3-1 score. This historic victory for the organisation will now secure them a chance to fight for the world championship title.
The Revenant Esports Brawl Stars roster is composed of the following players:
Ashmit “Sergeant Clash” Raj Singh
Prashant “Trashant” Malik
Jerome “Response” Kuek Jiaen
Joshua “Prime” Lim
“It’s truly an exhilarating feeling to know that we have made history by qualifying for the Brawl Stars World Finals 2023 in Sweden,” said Revenant Esports’ Brawl Stars team captain Sergeant Clash. “We might have been the underdogs but I was confident in my team that we would get the Golden Ticket. We’ve put in countless hours, practising day in and day out to improve our skills, and it feels amazing to see that dedication pay off. Now, we’ll get back to work and start getting ready for the World Finals.”
The Revenant Esports Brawl Stars team posing with their Golden Tickets to the 2023 World Finals. (Image Credits: Revenant Esports)
The Brawl Stars World Finals 2023 will take place from Nov. 24 to 26 at the Elmia Exhibition and Convention Center in Jönköping, Sweden. Twelve of the globe’s best teams, including the likes of Revenant Esports, SK Gaming, NAVI, and Tribe Gaming, will compete for the title of world champions.
“We are an organisation that believes in scouting and identifying the best esports athletes and then providing them with the right support to nurture them into stars,” said Revenant Esports founder and CEO Rohit Jagasia. “It’s great to see this formula work out with our Brawl Stars team which has made history with their achievement today. I wish them all the best as they head into the Brawl Stars World Finals while carrying the hopes of all Indian fans.”
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.
