- Hindi News
- Business
- FIFA World Cup 2026 LIVE: Unite8Sports, Zee5 Stream; India Rights Secured
New Delhi8 minutes ago
- copy link
The United States, Canada and Mexico are joint hosts of the FIFA World Cup 2026.
In India, you will be able to watch FIFA World Cup 2026 on TV on ‘United 8 Sports’ and Zee5 app. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) will also officially broadcast the World Cup 2026 and its upcoming editions. Unite 8 Sports is the company’s new sports channel.
The FIFA World Cup will be played jointly by America, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19. 48 teams will participate in this tournament and 104 matches will be played.
Indian broadcasters were not interested due to time zone.
Zee Entertainment has announced that it has acquired the media rights to the 2026 and 2030 FIFA Men’s World Cups, the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup and other major FIFA events up to 2034. It also includes documentary-series content for the Indian market.
This announcement of the broadcast rights of FIFA World Cup 2026 has been made less than two weeks before the start of the tournament. Due to time zone differences, the live telecast of most matches in India will start after midnight. Because of this, Indian broadcasters were not interested.
‘G’ will show from Under-17 to Intercontinental Cup also
Apart from the Men’s and Women’s World Cup, ‘Zee’ will also telecast several other major football tournaments on its platform. These include Under-17 World Cup, Women’s Under-17 World Cup, Under-20 World Cup, Women’s Under-20 World Cup, Futsal World Cup, Futsal Women’s World Cup and Intercontinental Cup.
Zee’s entry after the breakdown of FIFA-Jiostar deal
According to media reports, there was no agreement between FIFA and JioStar regarding the pricing of the broadcast of the current and upcoming tournaments. After this, Zee Entertainment entered this race.
Zee has discontinued some of its entertainment channels and introduced four new channels for sports lovers. This includes ‘Unite 8 Sports 1’ and ‘Unite 8 Sports 1 HD’ for Hindi viewers and ‘Unite 8 Sports 2’ and ‘Unite 8 Sports 2 HD’ for English.
The demand was for 100 million dollars, Jiostar estimated the value at 20 million.
The last FIFA World Cup 2022 was held in Qatar, which was played in the right time zone for Indian viewership, the rights of which were bought by Viacom 18 (now part of Jiostar) for $62 million.
According to reports, this time FIFA wanted $ 100 million (about ₹ 950 crore) for broadcast rights from India, but later it was also ready to come down to $ 60 million (about ₹ 570 crore).
In comparison, ‘China Media Group’, which took the rights in China, has paid 62 million dollars (about ₹ 590 crore) for this edition. However, JioStar had estimated its value for India at only $20 million (about ₹190 crore), on which FIFA did not agree.
Apart from football, cricket, kabaddi and wrestling will also be shown.
The company said in a media note that apart from football, cricket, kabaddi, badminton, wrestling and combat sports will also be telecast on these new channels. Zee already has tournaments like Bengal Super League, UP Kabaddi League and ILT20 in its portfolio, so with the arrival of FIFA World Cup 2026, its sports package will become very strong.
Zee returns to sports broadcasting sector after 8 years
Last year itself, Zee Entertainment had expressed its desire to re-enter the sports broadcasting sector. About 8 years ago, the company had sold its sports channels to Culver Max Entertainment Private Limited (corporate name of Sony Pictures Networks India).
Zee first entered the sports world in 2005 with ‘Zee Sports’ and a year later expanded its reach by acquiring ‘Ten Sports’.
Source link
[ad_3]
