Television is a zombie that refuses to stay in its grave. Just when the tech press spent half a decade telling you that the glowing rectangle in your living room was a glorified monitor for your Apple TV, the old guard clawed its way back. The latest evidence of this regression? FanCode just sublicensed the linear television rights for the Indian Super League (ISL) to Sony Pictures Networks India.
It’s a retreat dressed up as a partnership.
For the uninitiated, FanCode—the streaming arm of the Dream Sports empire—has been trying to convince us that sports consumption should be a digital-first, data-heavy, customizable experience. They wanted you to buy "Match Passes" for the price of a roadside samosa. They wanted you to live in the app. But reality, specifically the reality of Indian infrastructure and advertising budgets, had other plans.
Now, the ISL is heading back to Sony’s linear channels. It’s a move that feels less like a strategic expansion and more like an admission of a fundamental truth: streaming math is still broken.
The friction here isn't hard to spot. If you’re a football fan in India, you’ve been bounced around more than the ball in a rainy Kolkata derby. One season it’s Star Sports. The next it’s JioCinema for free—until it isn’t. Then FanCode enters the mix with a subscription model that asks you to pay for specific "tours" or "seasons." Now, if you want the reliability of a broadcast signal that doesn’t lag by thirty seconds during a crucial penalty, you’re back to paying for a Sony Sports pack on your cable or DTH bill.
It’s a classic double-dip. You pay for the data to stream it on your phone when you’re stuck in traffic, and you pay the cable operator to ensure you don’t see a "buffering" wheel when you finally get home.
Sony, for its part, is desperate. After the spectacular, multi-billion-dollar car crash that was the failed Zee merger, Sony Pictures Networks India found itself standing in the middle of the sports market with empty pockets and a lot of airtime to fill. They lost the IPL. They aren't the primary home of the heavy-hitting ICC cricket tournaments. Picking up the ISL from FanCode is like buying a used sedan because the dealership wouldn't let you finance the Ferrari. It’s sensible, it’s functional, but it’s a far cry from the dominance they once envisioned.
Let’s talk about the experience. FanCode’s digital broadcast is fine, provided your ISP isn't having a bad day. But for a league that desperately wants to be taken seriously as a top-tier product, the "digital-only" or "digital-mostly" approach was a gamble. Advertisers still worship at the altar of the television set. They want the "Big Screen" impact. They want the captive audience that doesn't have fourteen other tabs open.
By handing the linear rights to Sony, FanCode is essentially outsourcing the heavy lifting of reach. It’s a tacit nod to the fact that while 5G might be the marketing buzzword of the year, the average viewer in a Tier-2 city still trusts a satellite dish more than a router.
There’s a specific kind of annoyance reserved for the modern sports fan. We were promised a world where we could ditch the ₹500 monthly cable bill for a few targeted apps. Instead, we’re stuck in a fragmented hellscape. You need one app for the Premier League, another for the ISL, a third for the Champions League, and a fourth if you happen to enjoy a random cricket series in the West Indies.
This FanCode-Sony deal doesn't simplify that. It just adds another layer of "where is the game on tonight?"
The financial specifics of the deal remain tucked away in NDAs, but the subtext is loud. FanCode needs the cash injection and the brand legitimacy that comes with a Sony logo. Sony needs the content to convince people not to cancel their sports packs. The fan? The fan just gets another bill.
It’s a loop. We spent ten years trying to kill the bundle, only to find out that the bundle was the only thing keeping the lights on. We’re watching the slow-motion re-consolidation of media in real-time. The disruptors are tired. The incumbents are hungry. And your television, that "dumb" screen you tried to replace with a tablet, is currently laughing at you.
How many more subscriptions do you think you can juggle before you just decide to go to the stadium or, worse, check the score on Twitter and call it a day?