iWorld
Synamedia launches pre-integrated security & business solutions for Android TV
Mumbai: Independent video software provider Synamedia on Wednesday announced that it has integrated a broad range of its video offerings with Android TV and has extended its Infinite cloud TV platform to support Android TV devices.
Using Google’s Broadcast Stack for hybrid set-top boxes (STBs) powered by Android TV, Synamedia has developed pre-integrated solutions including user interfaces, watermarking and broadcast/OTT security, Clarissa business insights, and Synamedia Iris addressable advertising, the company said in a statement.
Launched in October 2020, Google’s Broadcast Stack is designed to accelerate the reach of the Android TV operating system by providing the video technology providers with clarity and direction about how hybrid services can be deployed rapidly and economically.
Video service providers can now pick and mix from these pre-integrated services to build an Android TV solution that best meets their needs, while also having the option to use the entire bundle for a complete end-to-end package. Each service is tested and proven to work with a choice of STB hardware, said the statement.
“Our agnostic approach is designed to bring the best of Synamedia innovation to all platform eco-systems. Now, with this Android TV initiative, we are delivering on that commitment,” said Synamedia’s CTO, Nick Thexton. “For many years we have worked on Android TV applications and bespoke security integrations. With these latest solutions, we are making it easy and affordable for customers to realise all the benefits of the Android TV ecosystem, including its wealth of applications, voice control, and smart integration.”
“Using these pre-integrated Synamedia solutions – either individually or as a bundle – operators can go live in just six months while cutting development costs,” Thexton added.
Synamedia said it is also working to define new interfaces and integration points for advanced features so that operators can select best-in-class products for their hybrid Android TV solution.
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.
