MAM
Innovative and creative: Star Sports campaigns in 2019
MUMBAI: Star Sports – India’s leading sports broadcaster is committed to bringing the best sporting action from around the world to its viewers. With the focus on engaging with die-hard fans while also introducing new people to the exciting world of sports, Star Sports conceptualized new and innovative campaigns. The aim of the campaigns was to capture everything that makes sports exciting and builds up anticipation for tournaments.
Let Kids Play and A Christmas Surprise by Virat Kohli
In 2019, Team India captain Virat Kohli took it upon himself to bring happiness to the children of the nation. In collaboration with Star Sports, Captain Kohli launched the ‘Let Kids Play’ campaign which urged parents to allow kids to go out and play. The campaign focused on how outdoor activities build character, personality and leadership qualities in kids.
Let Kids Play
For Christmas, Kohli brought joy in the lives of children in a shelter home as he dressed up as Santa Claus and showed up with gifts for the children. After fulfilling the wishes of each and every child, Kohli gave them the best surprise of all as he removed his disguise and celebrated Christmas with the children.
Christmas Surprise with Virat Kohli
The Home of Cricket
With each passing season, the Indian Premier League unearths new young talent that sets the game on fire. To build on this very narrative, Star Sports, in collaboration with BCCI, unveiled the #GameBanayegaName campaign to establish the platform that VIVO IPL provides to untapped talent. The campaign set the tone for upcoming tournaments and as the competition progressed, provided the inspiration for several standout performances from budding stars like Riyan Parag, Shubman Gill, Navdeep Saini, Arshdeep Singh among others.
GameBanayegaName
In a similar vein, to generate buzz around the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, the #CricketKaCrown campaign was unveiled. The central thought of the campaign was of the ICC CWC trophy being the ‘Crown of Cricket’ which every World Cup team sought to win. Winning the ‘Crown of Cricket’ would get the team the bragging rights for the next four years.
Cricket Ka Crown
In an attempt to break away from the norm, Star Sports introduced animated storytelling with a bat and ball as humanized characters that help break the clutter and drive recall for the Home Season of Cricket starting with the contest between India and South Africa. The TVCs created a unique identity in the form of a ‘Cricket Universe’, where the Bat termed as ‘Balla Ram’ and Ball as ‘Ball-Adams’ – symbolize the fan voices from two countries and are seen in a real-life environment.
Ballaram vs Ball Adams
The IND-WI series began with Rohit Sharma and Keiron Pollard putting their friendship on the backburner on Twitter and launching the #UnfriendshipDay campaign. The campaign caught a lot of eyes on the social media platform as fans enjoyed the banter between the two IPL teammates with a series of videos showing them playing. The #UnfriendshipDay campaign created anticipation amongst fans and helped in creating a lot of buzz around the IND-WI T20 series.
#UnfriendshipDay
Fans come together to celebrate the best football action
Football as a sport is growing by leaps and bounds in India leading to Star Sports’ launching its new HERO ISL campaign to showcase the love of fans for their favourite teams and how truly invested in the sport they are. This campaign is based on the #truelove and passion fans have showcased for their favourite teams. The #truelove campaign for HERO ISL 2019-20 also saw individual creative campaigns run by ATK, Kerala Blasters and North East United F.C. showcasing the love and never-ending support of their fans for their players and teams.
HERO ISL True Love
Kerala Blaster True Love
NorthEast United FC True Love
ATK True Love
Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL) conducted the HERO U-17 Women’s Championship under the aegis of AIFF, with the aim to select the best players to represent India at the 2020 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup. FSDL along with Star Sports launched the #GroundsKnowNoGender campaign to build interest in women’s youth football in the country and inspire girls across India to take up the sport.
Grounds Know No Gender
One of the most watched football leagues, the Premier League, has found a home on the Star Sports network for several years now. India’s passion for football and the Premier League has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years and has gained legions of fans- both old and new- across the country. The recent campaign by Star Sports shows a young girl who gradually falls in love with the Premier League as she sees her brother wear his emotions on his sleeve for his favourite Premier League club. The campaign is designed around the central thought of showcasing the journey of how people fall in love with Premier League. This slice of life portrayal is inspired by numerous stories of siblings and friends as to how they fell in love with their favorite club.
Premier League
Toughest Season of vivo Pro Kabaddi
Depicting Kabaddi as a tough sport, the #IsseToughKuchNahi campaign conceptualized by Star Sports ahead of the Pro Kabaddi League, highlighted key aspects that players build over the course of the season which include strength, agility and absolute brute power. The first TVC in the series starring Telugu Titans ace defender Vishal Bharadwaj was launched during the most anticipated clash between India and England at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 across TV and Digital mediums. The other films that followed, featured kabaddi heroes such as ‘The Showman’ Rahul Chaudhari and Siddharth ‘Bahubali’ Desai.
Promo 1 featuring Vishal Bhardwaj
Promo 2 featuring Rahul Chaudhari
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.
