Gaming
Revenant Esports signs Punkk for BGMI esports lineup ahead of Rs two crore tournament
Mumbai: Revenant Esports, an esports organisation has announced a new edition to its Battlegrounds Mobile India Esports lineup. Ashutosh “Punkk” Singh, the 21-year-old hailing from Chirawa, Rajasthan, is the newest addition to the team ahead of the anticipated BGMI India Series (BGIS), Krafton’s Rs 2,00,00,000 prize pool esports tournament.
At Revenant, Punkk joins longtime former allies Sensei and Fierce. Having played with them for nearly two years back from 2020 to 2022, he has an understanding of the team’s playstyle while bringing in experience from his recent stints at Reckoning Esports and Velocity Gaming.
Furthermore, having played with Sensei, who currently serves as the IGL for Revenant Esports, for such a long time, Punk will be able to naturally assimilate into the team, ahead of the crucial The Grind phase of the BGMI India Series.
Having previously served as an IGL himself, he will be able to assist Sensei in crucial situations in-game. Punk also brings an aggressive playstyle to the team and his gun-power, for which he is widely renowned, will help the team pick up the finishes which are very important in the new points system for BGMI Esports.
Commenting on his reunion with former teammates and joining Revenant Esports, Punk remarked, “I am very excited to be a part of Revenant Esports and reunite with my old friends Sensei and Fierce. I think all of us have a deep understanding of our respective play styles in the game. With our collective experience and synergy, combined with the prowess of Aquanox and Blaze, we will be able to leave a strong mark on the tournament.”
Revenant Esports’ BGMI Esports lineup is one of the most formidable in the country. The team has previously finished second in the Skyesports Championship 5.0 including a fifth place finish at the India-Korea Invitational in Delhi. A trophy, however, has alluded the team which they are looking to change with the addition of Punkk. The new lineup ahead of the BGIS is as follows:
- Deepak “Sensei” Negi
- Punkk
- Harsh “Aquanox” Rao
- Hamze “Blaze” Khozema Hyderabadwala
- Ritesh “Fierce” Nawandar
Revenant Esports founder and CEO Rohit Jagasia added, “We are delighted to welcome Punkk to the Revenant family. His familiarity with our team dynamics and exceptional skills make him an invaluable asset as we gear up for the BGMI India Series.”
Revenant Esports’ BGMI lineup will be seen in action at The Grind stage of the BGIS 2024. As one of the country’s top esports organisations, the team has received a direct invite into this stage and will be competing for a spot in the BGIS 2024 Main Event. The Grind is being held online and all players will be competing in the tournament from Revenant’s state-of-the-art boot camp in Mumbai, India.
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.
