The International Cricket Council and JioStar, the media company that holds the $3-billion broadcast and streaming rights for ICC tournaments from 2024-2027, said on Friday that the agreement between the two was in full force. Star India, which has been merged with Viacom18 to form JioStar, had won the ICC media rights in 2022 for the 2024-2027 cycle
“JioStar continues as the ICC’s official media rights partner and is fully committed to honour its contractual obligations in letter and spirit,” a joint statement said. It added that JioStar was focussed on providing “uninterrupted, world-class coverage of upcoming ICC events, including the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup”.
Speculation Addressed
The statement acquires significance since speculation had gathered steam this week that the two partners were on a sticky wicket with regard to the media agreement owing to a weak TV advertising market. The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 is scheduled to be held in February in India and Sri Lanka.
However, ICC and JioStar said in their latest statement that the preparations for the event was progressing as planned, adding that there was no impact on viewers or advertisers.
“ICC and JioStar, as long-term commercial partners, maintain regular communication on operational, commercial and strategic matters focused on the role the partnership can play in growing the sport,” the statement said.
Speculation had also indicated that ICC had tapped competitors such as Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI), Amazon Prime and Netflix for the media rights after JioStar had expressed its inability to service the last two years of the contract over mounting losses.
JioHotstar Dominance
But experts have said that sports remains a key programming differentiator for JioStar and its streaming platform JioHotstar. The latter crossed over one billion downloads on Google Play in India, joining apps such as Netflix that have achieved this milestone.
This follows the platforms already having a close race in terms of subscribers. JioHotstar, launched in February as the combined platform of JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar, has about 300 million paid subscribers. On the other hand, Netflix, which is present in around 190 countries, is said to have about 309.8 million subscribers as of September, according to Bloomberg Consensus.
With over 500 million monthly active users, JioHotstar also leads the OTT market in the country.