MAM
Star Sports: The marketing hype, the gameplan
MUMBAI: Do it in style. Do it big. That’s what big brands do. And Star India has taken the same tack during the ongoing relaunch of the erstwhile ESPN-Star Sports channels under the new brand of Star Sports. It has kept aside a marketing war chest of an estimated Rs 10 crore to start with for the comprehensive campaign called ‘Believe’ to spread awareness about the brand identity of Star Sports and its six channels.
To make the message more believable, it has roped in India’s talented cricket captain M S Dhoni as Believe’s first ambassador. And the attempt of the campaign is to outline the beliefs that have made him one of the most iconic heroes of our time and to link the fact that Star Sports brings these very champions to TV screens.
Our aim is to make ‘Star Sports’ one of the most iconic sports brands in the world, says Gayatri Yadav
Then there is Navjot Sidhu. Cricket lovers and fans are more than familiar with the extremely entertaining former Test cricketer and now TV personality Navjot Singh Sidhu. The funny Sikh features in a TV commercial stating “Joh baat Hindi mein hai, kissi aur mein nahin” promoting India’s first 24×7 Hindi sports channel Star Sports 3.
Exults Star India executive vice president marketing and communications Gayatri Yadav: “Our aim is to make ‘Star Sports’ one of the most iconic sports brands in the world. The campaign is based on a core insight that consumers are searching for hero moments in their life. They want to strive for better and realize their own potential for greatness. Our belief is that everyone can take part and share in greatness. We can all be inspired. The mission is to bring the fan closer to heroes than ever before. Our aim is to inspire the hero in you.”
A massive print road block on 6 November in editions of national newspapers such as The Times of India, The Hindu, Dainik Jagran, Navbharat Times, Maharashtra Times, Nai Duniya saw political and general news being relegated to the inside pages while sports news took over the front page. “The thought was: let’s imagine a world where sports comes first,” says Yadav.
This thought was taken forward on electronic news with Aaj Tak where Star Sports came first on news bulletin logo stings and anchors wore Star Sports branded T-shirts. The two promos featuring Dhoni and Sidhu are getting tremendous air play across all of Star India’s 33 channels.
On the online and digital front, the home pages of MSN and Yahoo networks had a splash of only sports news; there was none of the general, political and entertainment buzz. A very strong engagement with YouTube subscribers wherein every video watched in India on that day had a pre-roll of the Believe promo. YouTube’s mobile app had a Star Sports promotional banner slapped on. Facebookers were greeted with a digital banner of Dhoni and Star Sports every time they logged out.
Yadav says that the massive digital burst activity resulted in the new look generating close to 15 million views on day one itself.
On the out of home front, hoardings sprang up in Mumbai and Delhi to coincide with the ongoing Star Sports ‘Believe’ India vs West Indies cricket series. Four digital screens put up at terminal 3 of Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus Airport in Mumbai.
Says Yadav: “We want to create a brand that breaks the rules, a brand that looks, speaks, sounds, behaves like no other in the TV space.”
If one goes, by the buzz that’s been generated amongst sports TV fans and the janta about the new Star Sports brand, it appears that she and her team have succeeded – to a large extent.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
