Gaming
S8ul adds global stars to CODM roster ahead of Esports World Cup 2025
MUMBAI: If Call of Duty had a multiverse, S8ul Esports just assembled the Avengers version of a roster. S8ul Esports is locked, loaded, and gunning for global glory as it unveils a turbocharged Call of Duty: Mobile (CODM) lineup featuring some of the most decorated names in the game. The Indian esports juggernaut has added Jezz (USA), Frann (Indonesia) and Marvel (France) to its already promising CODM squad, ahead of its international campaign at the Esports World Cup 2025 in Riyadh.
Joining the elite trio are coach ZIM winner of the 2020 Best CODM Coach Award and strategic analyst Cali Gaming, who’ll be decoding gameplay and fine-tuning tactics from the sidelines. The revamped roster now includes six players from across the globe, including Indian players Samruddha (SAMs), Samartha (JOKOs) and Rishi Dubey (Trunks).
And these aren’t just flashy imports. Jezz, aged 21, was part of the squad that clinched the 2022 CODM World Championship, netting a cool 700,000 dollars (approx. Rs 6 crore) in prize money. He’s consistently placed in the Top 8 globally and recently triumphed at the Snapdragon Pro Series Season 5 – North America.
Frann brings serious heat from Southeast Asia, having won every Major Series title from Season 7 to 12 and finishing Top 8 at the 2023 World Championship. Marvel, the French phenom, adds Euro-style precision with wins at SPS Season 5 (India) and Season 6 (Europe), and a Top 5 finish at the 2021 West Finals.
With this blend of global talent and homegrown stars, S8ul becomes the only Indian organisation competing across 12 esports titles, reinforcing its ambition to be more than just dominant, it wants to be definitive.
S8ul co-founder Naman Mathur aka Mortal called the signings “a big moment for us not just as a team, but as a community.” He added that the new roster reflects S8ul’s broader vision: “To build strong, competitive teams while staying true to who we are.”
With its foot firmly on the gas and crosshairs locked on Riyadh, S8ul isn’t just playing to compete, it’s playing to rewrite the rulebook for Indian esports.
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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.
