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Blame the Indian broadcasting regulations if you miss the FIFA World Cup this year

If broadcasters are unable to recover money spent on sports rights, the consequences will not remain confined to their sector alone. Sporting leagues will themselves lose value.

With less than a month to go for the 2026 World Cup, FIFA still does not have a broadcaster locked for making the tournament available to viewers in India. Key players who bid on media rights, JioStar and Sony, are being conservative with their bids at the moment.

JioStar offered $20 million for India rights. As JioStar’s current offer is far less than FIFA’s initial expectation of $100 million, and even its revised expectation of $35 million, the global football federation remains less than keen on accepting Jio’s bid and granting the media rights.

Meanwhile, India’s public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati, on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that it holds no legal responsibility to acquire the broadcasting rights for the FIFA World Cup 2026.

It is important to understand that the cooled appetite of broadcasters to invest in World Cup rights has little to do with demand. For the 2022 edition, 110 million people streamed the games, and 84 million tuned in on linear television. Indeed, the uncertainty around the World Cup telecasts airing in the country is possibly because India’s broadcasting regulations have steadily made the purchase of sports rights commercially unviable.

The first issue is the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007, which requires sporting events of “national importance”, such as the........

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