MAM
Dream11 educates players on how to use the app
New Delhi: Last month, the fantasy platform Dream11 made headlines for bagging the IPL title sponsorship for 2020 at a whopping Rs 222 crore. It outshined Unacademy, Tata, Byju's and piped the Chinese smartphone maker VIVO, who was the title sponsor until the last year, to grab the top spot. For the last two years, Dream11 was making its presence felt by being the associate sponsor to several IPL teams.
The tournament is just a week away and the title sponsor has already begun its marketing activities. It has released videos on the social media platform to educate fans on how to play, select teams, score points, and other important details about Dream 11. The videos are created with cricketers such as Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Rishab Pant, and Hardik Pandey.
In one of the content pieces, the protagonists explain, how to create your Dream11 team by selecting any of the impending matches from the ongoing cricket series. The user can do so by using his/her sports knowledge and skills in selecting key players within a budget of 100 credits. Afterward, join any Dream11 free or cash contest to win cash and the ultimate bragging rights to show off your improvement in the Free/Skill contests on Dream11!
The third step asks users to follow the match and track their fantasy scorecard. The scorecard is updated every 2 minutes. Once the match is concluded, the fantasy team’s final ranking and winning amount will be visible on the leaderboard.
The videos are a part of the brand's ongoing content marketing strategy where it aims to educate the audiences about the brand, what is fantasy cricket, how it is played to the consumers. The brand is doing it with the help of simple, easy, and entertaining content around cricket. Dream11 has released relatable videos in past also on subjects such as Understanding Fantasy Cricket, How to Play, How to refer your friends, How to add cash, how to verify your account, How to join a cash contest and others.
Dream11, cofounded in 2008 by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth, leads the fantasy sports category in India and is funded by the likes of Kalaari Capital, Think Investments, Multiples Equity, and China’s Tencent Holdings. The duo has had a long journey of ups and downs before making Dream11 a unicorn company. It can be safely said that Dream11 is the leading gaming company in the country. The fantasy gaming app has diversified and is offering multiple sports to the people. However, cricket by far has the highest number of takers on the app. The company has also diversified with multiple offerings such as Fancode, DreamX and Dream Sports Foundation.
The brand, in past, hired MS Dhoni as the brand ambassador and launched several campaigns with him. One of the most popular campaigns of Dream11 was 'Yeh Game Hai Mahaan'. The film was well-received by the audiences.
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
