Analysis
The IPL’s coming $5 billion squeeze
Media Partners Asia expects a 94-match IPL to fetch Rs 48,500 crore, flat overall and 13% lower per match. One credible buyer leaves the BCCI bargaining over everything beyond the cheque.
JioStar
Reportage
The Rs 1,500 crore prompt: How Google and OpenAI bought into Indian cricket
As gaming money receded, Google and OpenAI turned to cricket with rights, partnerships, and media packages valued at nearly Rs 1,500 crore. Both want their products to become the first place Indians turn to when a question comes to mind.
Reportage
Pro Kabaddi’s next raid is for growth
For a decade, the Pro Kabaddi League taught India to watch. The next five years will test whether that attention can become a business.
Analysis
The BCCI’s Ouroboros economy
Indian cricket has never looked richer. The money now gathers around the properties that draw time and value away from bilateral cricket.
Analysis
Eight years of FIFA, one last bet for Zee
A promoter family capped below 4%, a billion-dollar claim in London, a shrinking core business, and an eight-year promise to world football’s governing body. Zee’s FIFA deal reads less like a sports play than a final, high-risk wager on whatever leverage it still retains.
Analysis
The World Cup India will not see, until it does
Nine weeks before kick-off, as the world readies itself for its grandest sporting ritual, India’s screens stay blank. Between what FIFA wants and what this market will pay, the gap has exposed how sharply the economics of sports broadcasting have changed.
Reportage
India-Pakistan: Cricket’s costliest fixture goes missing
Pakistan’s proposed forfeit threatens JioStar’s $900 million tournament and the ICC revenues that fund the global game. Cricket built its economics around a fixture no contract could guarantee.
Reportage
Inside cricket’s $3 billion workaround
JioStar is locked into a $3 billion contract it cannot afford or exit. The workaround will show whether Indian cricket’s decade of growth was sustainable or inflated.