Zimbabwe Cricket has signed broadcast partnerships with FanCode and Zee for India’s tour of Zimbabwe, ensuring the series will be available across streaming and linear TV audiences in India. On paper, this is a routine rights deal. In practice, it underlines how valuable even non-ICC, non-marquee bilateral cricket remains in the Indian market. A bilateral series with outsized media value
For Zimbabwe Cricket, the partnership delivers access to one of the world’s largest cricket audiences and a critical commercial revenue stream. For FanCode and Zee, the series offers fresh live inventory in a crowded but still cricket-hungry media ecosystem. The bigger story: cricket rights are splintering What stands out is not just the tour, but the distribution model. Indian cricket viewership is no longer concentrated with a handful of broadcasters. Digital platforms like FanCode have steadily built relevance by acquiring niche and bilateral rights that traditional networks once ignored. For advertisers, this creates both opportunity and complexity. Brands can now access highly engaged cricket audiences through targeted digital buys, but campaign planning increasingly requires navigating multiple rights holders, platforms and measurement systems. The deal also reflects a broader industry shift: secondary cricket properties are becoming strategically important for streamers looking to maintain year-round engagement outside IPL and ICC windows.
Our insight As sports rights fragment further, the winners may not be the platforms with the biggest tournaments alone, but those that can consistently aggregate cricket attention across the calendar. In India, cricket inventory is no longer seasonal. It is becoming perpetual.