India and China Hold Out: Infantino's Broadcast Headache 30 Days Before Kickoff
Two markets, 2.7 billion residents, no deal. FIFA has cut its asking price for the 2026 World Cup rights in India from $100m to about $35m and in China from $300m to $120-150m, but neither broadcaster has signed. The structural causes go well beyond kickoff times.
W ith the tournament one month away, FIFA still has no broadcast agreements in India or China, leaving roughly 2.7 billion potential viewers without a confirmed path to watch the 2026 World Cup live. The Guardian reports that president Gianni Infantino's federation has been forced to step its asking prices down sharply in both markets and has dispatched a high-ranking delegation to Beijing this week, with industry observers expecting a deal there within days and India running on a slower clock of perhaps two weeks.
On the Indian side, FIFA initially asked roughly $100m for the rights and has now cut that to about $35m, according to the Guardian's sourcing. The closest standing bid is the $20m put forward by Reliance-Disney's JioStar venture. The historical baseline is much higher: Sony paid $90m for the combined 2014 and 2018 cycles and Viacom18 spent $62m to show Qatar 2022. The structural reason for the climbdown is not, contrary to widespread assumption, the awkward kick-off times. Only 14 of the 104 matches start before midnight in India, but the broadcast slot is broadly comparable to UEFA Champions League games that the same audience watches in volume.
The harder cause, according to Shaji Prabhakaran, a member of the Asian Football Confederation's executive committee and former general secretary of the All India Football Federation, is the consolidation of the Indian sports broadcasting market itself. Prabhakaran told the Guardian that "there is no real competition in the Indian sports broadcasting market, which makes it more difficult for FIFA, and in what market there is, cricket is the primary sport and the main focus." Viacom18's 2022 push for sports inventory came when it was a fresh entrant willing to absorb losses to anchor a content slate. The Reliance-Disney merger has since collapsed that field to JioStar plus Sony.
Cricket revenue cushions are also softer than they were. Indian press reports cited by the Guardian indicate average viewership for this season's Indian Premier League, JioStar's flagship inventory, is down 26 percent year-on-year. Broadcasters facing softer cricket numbers are reluctant to add a non-host World Cup that lacks India and where the Messi versus Ronaldo storyline that drove past audience peaks is fading. Layered on top is foreign-exchange pressure: the Indian rupee was 54 to the dollar when Sony bought the 2014 rights, 78 when Viacom18 closed Qatar, and 95 now.
China is the heavier file. Reuters figures cited by the Guardian put China at 17.7 percent of global linear TV reach for the 2022 World Cup and 49.8 percent on digital and social platforms. The Beijing Daily has reported FIFA initially asked between $250m and $300m, and that CCTV's working budget for the rights is roughly $60-80m. Even at FIFA's reduced range of $120-150m there is a gap of at least $40m. The 12-hour time zone between Beijing and New York is real but secondary to the same structural pattern as India: the Chinese men's team is absent again, social media support for CCTV holding the line has been widespread, and a sizable share of younger Chinese fans already work around restrictions to access overseas streams.
The wider stakes for Infantino are not just about closing these two contracts. Prabhakaran framed the risk plainly in his Guardian interview: "There always has to be a balance. The value of the product has to be protected or there can be consequences." If India and China secure significant late discounts a month before kickoff, future negotiating partners in every confederation will note it. But signing nothing in markets that together represent more than a third of the world's population is the worse outcome. A deal in Beijing inside this week and an Indian resolution in the next fortnight are now the federation's working target.