India’s three-match T20I series against Afghanistan has thrown up an unusual question for cricket viewers: if JioStar paid Rs 5,963 crore for the media rights to India’s home international and domestic cricket, why isn’t the India-Afghanistan series being streamed on JioHotstar?
The answer lies in who owns the commercial rights to the series, rather than where the matches are being played.
The India-Afghanistan T20Is are being played at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi but the series is being hosted by the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB). Its media rights were separately awarded, with Sony Sports Network securing television rights and FanCode securing digital streaming rights in India.
That means viewers looking for the series on JioHotstar will not find it, even though JioStar holds the rights to India’s home international cricket under its much larger BCCI agreement.
What does the Rs 5,963 crore JioStar-BCCI deal cover?
JioStar’s Rs 5,963 crore agreement with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) covers India’s international and domestic home matches during the 2023-28 rights cycle.
The deal has made JioStar the principal broadcast and digital home for India’s cricket played under the BCCI’s commercial rights. That includes the India home fixtures that form part of the board’s own media-rights package.
But that does not mean every India match played on Indian soil automatically belongs to JioStar. This means that hosting a match and owning its commercial media rights are not necessarily the same thing.
Why Afghanistan owns the rights to this series
The current series was arranged as an Afghanistan home series, even though all three T20Is are being played in Delhi. That commercial structure means the ACB controls the rights to the series and can sell them separately from the BCCI’s India home rights.
For this series, Sony Sports Network acquired the television rights, while FanCode secured the digital rights. FanCode lists the India-Afghanistan tour among its live cricket offerings.
This is also why the location of the matches can be misleading for viewers. A game can be played in India without falling under JioStar’s BCCI home-media package.
A ₹68 crore-per-match comparison
There is another number that shows how unusual the rights market around bilateral cricket can be. For Afghanistan’s previous tour of India, JioStar reportedly paid about ₹68 crore per match as part of the BCCI’s 2023-28 media-rights property.
The current series is different because it is not being sold through that BCCI rights package. That distinction gives broadcasters and digital platforms room to bid separately for series where another cricket board controls the commercial rights.
For fans, however, the distinction is less obvious. JioStar has become so closely associated with Indian cricket that an India international not appearing on JioHotstar can seem counterintuitive.
The Afghanistan series is a reminder that Indian cricket’s media-rights market is not one single bundle. The broadcaster may change depending on who owns the rights to a particular series, even when India is playing and the matches are taking place at an Indian venue.