MAM
Budweiser extends sponsorship of BMW Williams Formula One team
MUMBAI. The BMW Williams Formula One team has confirmed that after a successful debut season, team sponsor Budweiser has extended its commercial relationship for the forthcoming season
The Budweiser identity will appear not only on the airbox of the FW26, but also on the monocoque tops and on the driver gloves of Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher.
Budweiser joined the team sponsor community at the British Grand Prix in July 2003. Anheuser-Busch VP global media and sports marketing Tony Ponturoreflected, “Our first season in Formula One has been a great experience. The BMW WilliamsF1 Team continues to be a valuable partner for Budweiser. The brand’s increased visibility on the cars and driver’s gloves will reach even more adult beer drinkers this season through Formula One’s worldwide viewing audience of more than 350 million.’
Budweiser is also making extensive use of its sponsorship with the announcement of the 25 winners of the True Racing promotion this month. Winners will be invited to contest a simulator race off in the WilliamsF1 Conference Centre to compete for 25 trips of a lifetime to international Grands Prix in Australia, Malaysia, China, Japan, US, Spain, Italy, Monaco and UK. Each winner will receive round trip flights, four star accommodation and tickets for two.
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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.
