The prospect of a FIFA World Cup blackout in the Indian market has been avoided after global soccer's governing body struck a last-minute broadcast rights agreement with media enterprise Zee Entertainment, for its newly launched Unite8 Sports network.
Announced this morning, this eight-year agreement begins immediately, with Zee scoring the rights to the men’s FIFA World Cups in 2026 and 2030, the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2027, and a host of other national team tournaments.
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Coverage will be disseminated across the four Unite8 Sports linear networks and the Zee 5 OTT streaming service.
This will span a host of tournaments, including the men’s and women’s FIFA World Cups in the under-17 and under-20 youth categories, the FIFA Futsal World Cups, and the FIFA Intercontinental Cup annual club tournament (up to 2030).
In all, this means that Zee will broadcast 39 FIFA events until 2034, starting on June 11 with the kick-off of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, to be held in Mexico, the US, and Canada.
Negotiations for this World Cup in particular were drawn out, with Indian media companies such as Jio reluctant to meet FIFA’s nine-figure asking price.
Indeed, reports in India suggest that Zee’s rights fee for the 2026 World Cup is in the region of $30-35 million, barely one-third of the $100 million that FIFA had reportedly originally demanded.
Viacom18 (now part of JioStar) held rights in 2022, reportedly paying just over $60 million for that edition alone – with that tournament held in Qatar, matches were on at a far more friendly time for Indian audiences.
FIFA will renegotiate in the market ahead of the 2034 World Cup, which will be held in Saudi Arabia (another friendly time zone for Indian audiences), at which point they will no doubt seek an uplift on the current figure.
Speaking on the announcement, Zee Entertainment deputy chief executive and chief financial officer Mukund Galgali said: “The partnership with FIFA marks a significant step in our journey to create a strong foundation in the sports ecosystem to drive long-term value creation. Football as a sport has tremendous under-leveraged potential in a country like India, and we see a massive opportunity in unlocking its mass appeal for billions of viewers across the nation.
“Our approach in the sports business is anchored in building a scalable and financially sustainable growth model through a disciplined capital allocation framework.”
Sandeep Mehrotra, the company’s chief operating officer, added: “We are equally focused on building a high-value advertising environment that delivers scale and depth of engagement. Our diversified sports and entertainment portfolio provides brands an opportunity to tap into varied consumer cohorts and leverage the full spectrum of live sporting moments and meaningful content formats.
For FIFA, meanwhile, this represents the last major market in which 2026 World Cup rights had not been sold.
Zee has also appointed a chief business officer in charge of the Unite8 Sports channels, with Bavesh Janavlekar taking up the mantle.
Janavlekar previously performed a similar role at Zee, overseeing its Marathi-language movies business across linear TV and studios.
The Unite8 channels will be predicated on two offerings, ‘Unite8 Sports 1’ with English-language coverage and 'Unite8 Sports 2’ with coverage in Hindi. Both offerings have a standard and high definition channel, bringing the total to four channels.
With the new Unite8 Sports brand, the company says it will air coverage of cricket once again, as well as soccer, kabaddi, badminton, and combat sports such as wrestling and boxing.
Zee Entertainment left the sector following the fallout from its failed ICC cricket sublicensing agreement with Star in 2024, and in the past had broadcast cricket’s ILT20 competition from the UAE.
