Doordarshan Steps In to Carry the World Cup in India After Private Broadcasters Walk Away
With JioStar's $20 million offer rejected and Sony staying out of the bidding, public broadcaster Prasar Bharati is moving to put the 2026 World Cup on free-to-air DD Sports — preventing what would have been an Indian blackout 31 days before kickoff.
I ndia's public broadcaster Doordarshan is moving to carry the 2026 FIFA World Cup live and free-to-air across the country after the commercial broadcast rights deadlock failed to break in time for kickoff. The development, reported by Best Media Info, Gujarat Samachar and Sunday Guardian among others, gives more than a hundred million Indian football fans a path to watch the tournament without a paid subscription — and ends weeks of growing fear that India would be one of the few major markets without live coverage of the expanded 48-team event.
The route to this point has been short and unusually public. FIFA opened the India rights sale back in July 2025 with a starting price reported at roughly US$100 million. As neither Reliance-Disney's JioStar joint venture nor Sony Pictures Networks moved on the package, FIFA stepped its asking price down to about US$35 million. JioStar countered at no more than US$20 million, FIFA declined, and the negotiation effectively collapsed inside a fortnight. With Sony staying out altogether, the commercial path to a private deal closed.
Two structural realities drove broadcasters' caution. The matches are being played in the United States, Canada and Mexico, which means almost every kick-off lands in the late-night or pre-dawn window for Indian viewers — historically a poor slot for live-sports ad inventory. India is also not in the tournament itself, which removes the home-team uplift that drove past audience peaks. Together the two factors made it hard for a commercial channel to model a US$30-million-plus rights payment alongside the production costs needed to cover a month-long event.
Doordarshan changes that math. DD Sports is carried free-to-air via terrestrial signal and is in tens of millions of households that do not subscribe to satellite or streaming services — particularly in smaller cities, district towns and rural areas where football has a strong but historically under-served audience. A public-broadcaster solution also activates India's Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, which obligates any private rights-holder to share events of national importance with the public broadcaster anyway — meaning at minimum the latter stages of the tournament would have ended up on Doordarshan even if a private deal had closed.
The deal is not yet formalised. Prasar Bharati and FIFA are still working through commercial terms and the production scope; the size of the package and whether it covers all 104 matches or a curated subset is the open question. Industry reporting points to Doordarshan stepping in as a fallback rather than acquiring the rights at the original commercial valuation, with FIFA prioritising reach over revenue in a market it has spent two years trying to grow. For Indian fans the practical consequence is what matters: with 31 days to the opening fixture in Mexico City on June 11, watching the World Cup live, on free television, is back on the table.