News Broadcasting
Weume Infosys bags mobile rights for Fifa World Cup
MUMBAI: Swiss sports event marketing major Infront Sports & Media AG has sold the India territory mobile broadcast rights for this year’s Fifa World Cup to Weume Infosys Private Limited, a Chennai-headquartered provider of mobile content and Internet services.
Infront made the announcement as part of four agreements it has signed for its World Cup new media rights package; the other three territories being France, Canada and Sweden.
The agreements enable the licensees to transmit up to four minutes of key match footage for “near-live” and/or delayed coverage over the Internet and/or via mobile networks to mobile phones, geo-blocked for user access only within each territory.
The exclusive mobile broadcast rights Weume Infosys has acquired, covers English and Hindi languages and applies also to archive video material of the 2002 event, which took place in Korea and Japan.
Weume (pronounced as We-U-Me) will distribute the content through Weume’s portal as well as mobile networks and mobile portals within the territory. The company’s target is to reach approximately 85 million subscribers, the announcement states.
Meanwhile, telecommunications operator France Telecom has secured the non-exclusive French-language rights for Internet highlight coverage of all World Cup matches for the territory of France. France Telecom will offer the match footage via its Internet platform.
In Canada is Rogers Communications Ltd, a diversified Canadian communications and media company, that is exclusively licensing the English-language Internet and mobile telephony rights in Canada to all 64 matches of the World Cup as well as archive material from the 2002 edition of the tournament. Rogers will leverage the rights acquired on its multiple platforms including Rogers Wireless, Rogers Cable and Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet. Rogers Sportsnet, a subsidiary of Rogers Communications, is already a World Cup television rights holder.
Swedish territory rights have gone to the Scandinavian nation’s largest commercial television broadcaster TV4 AB, which has acquired the Internet and mobile telephony rights to all 64 matches and archive access to 2002 tournament’s matches in Swedish and English languages. TV4 is already a television rights holder.
Infront has so far concluded new media agreements for almost 100 countries worldwide. With more such deals in the pipeline, Infront asserts that the 2006 Fifa World Cup will be the most diversified of any international sports event to date.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
