Gaming
Iqoo S8ul wins Rai Star x Gyan Gaming Cup
MOBA Legends squad bags Rs 12.5 lakh after 4-3 final thriller over Godlike from 1,024-team field.
MUMBAI: Iqoo S8ul just farmed the ultimate prize clutching a heart-stopping 4-3 grand final win over Godlike Esports to lift the Rai Star x Gyan Gaming Cup crown in Kolkata on 18 February. The month-long MOBA Legends 5v5 showdown drew a massive 1,024 teams through open qualifiers in single-elimination Bo1 format, with just 16 powering into the main brackets. S8ul Esports’ powerhouse roster IGL Mohammad Saad (Apex), Abhijeet Katkar (Abhi), Mehta Jay (J), Chirag Singh (Radium), Debasish Sana (Anti), and Joseph Nehhunjang (Kakarot) sliced through Group A like a well-timed ultimate, 2-0 Bo3 quarterfinal rout of Megatron Esports, 3-1 Bo5 semifinal domination of PEAK, and a flawless 4-0 Bo7 sweep of Elusivity to storm the decider.
There, composure trumped chaos in a Bo7 nail-biter, netting the squad Rs 12.5 lakh and cementing S8UL’s stranglehold on India’s MOBA scene.
S8ul co-founder Animesh Agarwal beamed, “This victory is a testament to the structure and long-term vision we are building at S8ul. The Indian MOBA ecosystem is entering a new phase of growth… Wins like this validate our investment in building elite lineups.”
IGL Apex, fresh off MLBB Mid Season Cup 2024 at the Esports World Cup ($3 million pool), added, “Coming into this tournament with so many teams, we knew the margin for error would be extremely small… That grand final was one of the most intense series we’ve played as a team and this title belongs to everyone who believed in us.”
For esports newbies, it’s like watching chess on steroids strategy, split-second calls, and crowd-roaring comebacks. S8ul’s run? Pure legend fuel, priming them for bigger global scraps.
Gaming
India’s broadcasters say no to Fifa World Cup 2026
Fifa has slashed its asking price by 65 per cent but India’s broadcasters are still not buying
MUMBAI: The world’s biggest sporting event cannot find a single taker in the world’s most sports-mad nation. Fifa’s television rights for the 2026 World Cup remain unsold in India, and the clock is ticking loudly.
To shift the property, world football’s governing body has already swallowed hard and cut its asking price from $100m to $35m, bundling in the 2030 edition as a sweetener. It has not worked. Indian broadcasters have looked at the offer, done the sums and quietly walked away.
The reasons are brutally simple. The 2026 tournament, co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, kicks off in a time zone that turns India’s primetime into a graveyard shift. Most matches will air between midnight and 7am IST, a scheduling catastrophe for advertisers chasing mass reach. The 2022 Qatar edition was a gift by comparison, with matches dropping neatly into Indian evenings. North America offers no such luxury.
The market itself has also changed beyond recognition. The merger of Star India and Viacom18 into JioStar has gutted the competitive tension that once sent sports rights prices soaring. Where rival bidders once slugged it out, there is now a single dominant buyer, and it is in no hurry. JioStar has valued the rights at roughly $25m, a full $10m below Fifa’s already-discounted floor price. That gap has so far proved unbridgeable.
Broadcasters are also nursing a ferocious cricket hangover. Between 2022 and 2023, Indian media houses committed well over $10bn to cricket rights alone, covering IPL, ICC events and BCCI domestic fixtures combined. After a binge of that scale, appetite for a football package that delivers a fraction of the ratings, in the dead of night, is close to zero.
The economics of football broadcasting make the maths even harder. Cricket, with its natural breaks every few overs, is an advertiser’s paradise. Football offers a 15-minute halftime and precious little else. Recovering a nine-figure rights fee from a single half-hour ad window is a stretch at the best of times. These are not the best of times: the Indian government’s tightening grip on real-money gaming and gambling advertising has vaporised a category that once underwrote the economics of big sporting events.
Nor is the World Cup an anomaly. Indian Super League valuations have cratered. English Premier League rights have softened across successive cycles. The cooling of football as a broadcast commodity in India is structural, not cyclical.
With the tournament opening on 11th June, Fifa is running out of road. It may yet blink and meet JioStar at $25m. Or it may go direct, streaming the entire tournament on its own platform, Fifa+, or cutting a digital deal with YouTube, and hoping that a generation of Indian football fans finds its way there without a broadcaster to guide them.
Either way, the beautiful game’s Indian chapter is looking decidedly ugly.
