News Broadcasting
WSG-Nimbus pockets Sri Lanks cricket rights
The Emerald island is going to see a lot of Harish Thawani, the promoter of media firm Nimbus Communications. The reason: Thawani has in partnership with the World Sports Group bagged the rights for Sri Lankan cricket for the next three years. The deal covers 14 tours and would involve 180 days of international cricket, reveals Thawani, who has emerged as one of the most important players of the sports rights business over the past two years.
While he is unwilling to give any fix on the price that WSG-Nimbus put in to be the successful bidder for the rights, industry estimates are that they cost him close to $30 million. The other bidder TWI apparently was not willing to match the bid.
The bid covers global telecast (both radio and TV) , sponsorship and stadium signage rights. Sources indicate that the final tab that WSG-Nimbus may have to cough up could be in the range of $45 million. WSG-Nimbus is a 50:50 joint venture between the UK based WSG plc and India’s Nimbus.
According to industry sources, WSG-Nimbus is likely to cut a deal with Zee Sports as the latter is quite hungry to grab quality cricket content, or whatever is left of it. News Corp has got the telecast rights to ICC backed cricket. And close associate, ESPN-Star Sports, has the rights to almost all the international cricket matches in Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, England, West Indies, Pakistan.The only other player with cricket rights is Mark Mascarenhas of World-Tel who apparently has not found too many takers for the Bangladesh cricket property he has acquired for some $12 million for four years.
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.
