Gaming
Top five highlights you can’t miss at the College Rivals LAN finale
Mumbai: With a stellar lineup boasting prominent esports and music personalities, College Rivals, India’s largest esports talent hunt, will culminate in an electrifying fashion at Nesco, Mumbai on 3 March. For months, the pioneering intellectual property of Ampverse, Asia’s largest ecosystem of gaming communities and IPs, in collaboration with DMI Finance, has offered college students across India the unprecedented opportunity to showcase their esports prowess.
Now, the grand finale of the event promises a similarly groundbreaking experience for its attendees alongside food and beverages and chill lounges. Whether you are a hardcore gamer, a music enthusiast, or a cosplay aficionado, here are the top five exciting activities in store for everyone at the one-of-a-kind experiential LAN finale:
Live music performances
In what will be a first in Indian Esports, the country’s well-renowned music sensations will be performing live at a LAN event finale. Fans will get the unique opportunity to groove to the beats of notable music artists Seedhe Maut, composed of Siddhant Sharma and Abhijay Negi, alongside Gaurav Pal aka Muhfaad, and Garv Taneja aka Char Diwaari. Their live performances will add an extra layer of excitement to the event.
Meet and greet with e-sports personalities
Gaming enthusiasts will have an exciting opportunity to rub shoulders with renowned esports personalities such as Naman Mathur (Mortal), Payal Dhare (PayalGaming), Tanmay Singh (ScoutOP), Aniket Sood (Kinganbru), Prishita Nair (MintyGal), Paras Singh (ParasOfficial), Jimesh Parmar (Jimmy Gaming), and Neha Gupta (Naira Gaming). This will be their chance to create unforgettable memories by interacting with some of the biggest names in the Indian gaming community.
LAN finals
Hardcore esports fans will be witnessing the ultimate showdown as 28 finalists, selected from a competitive pool of 92,000 participants representing colleges across the country, will battle it out individually across five titles on three different platforms. Whether it is the intense action of BGMI, Road to Valor, Valorant, Tekken 7, or FIFA 23, the attendees can expect nothing short of top-notch gameplay and fierce competition.
Arcade gaming zones
Taking a break from the main event, attendees will be able to dive into the world of arcade gaming. From racing simulators to classic arcade games, there will be something for everyone to enjoy. By testing your skills, and challenging your friends, this will serve as the perfect medium to experience the nostalgia of retro gaming.
Cosplay competition
Whether you are an experienced cosplayer or making your debut, this will be your chance to shine by embracing your favorite characters and showcasing your creativity. Expect to see a diverse range of costumes inspired by beloved video game characters, anime icons, and pop culture references.
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.
