MAM
Cricket Australia and adidas ink four-year partnership deal
MUMBAI: Cricket Australia and Adidas have joined forces in a four-year partnership that will see all Australian and state teams wearing revolutionary Adidas-designed playing uniforms from October 2005.
This will the first time that cricket fans will see the Australian team in separate, specially designed Adidas home and away strips to differentiate series played on local shores and abroad.
Other features of the partnership include tailor-cut playing uniforms for Australia’s female players – traditionally, the women’s uniforms have followed a male design – and International Cricket Council (ICC) approval to incorporate Adidas’ three-stripe design on the limited-overs playing uniforms.
Australia’s male and female teams are World Cup champions and lead the field in Test cricket. Adidas Australia is the market leader in sports apparel, with annual revenue generated by the Adidas brand across the world’s Test-playing nations approaches $1.5 billion.
With the deal coming into effect from 1 October 2005, the new Adidas uniforms will make their debut when Australia takes on an ICC World XI in the Johnnie Walker ICC Super Series in Melbourne and Sydney. The series represents the ideal platform from which to launch the partnership’s theme of innovation.
Under the partnership, Adidas will be the official supplier of:
Uniforms and training apparel for the Australian men’s, women’s and youth teams;
Men’s domestic uniforms for the Pura Cup and ING Cup;
Women’s domestic uniforms for the Commonwealth Bank Women’s National Cricket League;
Uniforms for domestic umpires
Australia’s one-day international playing uniforms will feature Adidas three stripe design – a hallmark of the Adidas brand. Cricket Australia gained approval under the ICC’s clothing and equipment regulations to include the three stripes on the one-day international and domestic playing uniforms as an additional manufacturer’s identification strip.
Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland said the partnership represented an ideal opportunity for both organisations to strengthen their brand values and performance targets. “We are delighted to welcome Adidas aboard as a valued partner of Australian cricket,” said Sutherland.
“Commercial partners underpin the financial security of our game. We are looking forward to working with Adidas in building a strong relationship for our teams and cricket supporters. There is a natural values fit between Adidas and Australian cricket in fostering innovation and respecting tradition. We now have a real opportunity to create and build a formidable association around this connection,” he added.
“In welcoming Adidas to our portfolio, we extend our gratitude to SM Brands (Fila) who have supported Australian cricket since 2001,” he further said.
The ‘ForMotion’ concept, which features specific fabric combinations and sculpted designs to accommodate a full range of movement, has been developed to ensure Australian cricket teams can maximise performance.
Adidas Australia MD Kevin Roberts said that the partnership between Adidas and Australia’s national sport is a natural fit. “Innovation is widely acknowledged as a sustainable source of competitive advantage. Recent product developments have positioned Adidas as the world’s most innovative sports brand and this same spirit of innovation represents the foundation of Adidas’ partnership with Cricket Australia,” he said.
“Adidas looks forward to working with Cricket Australia throughout an exciting period that will see further developments in the sport, such as the Twenty20 format which has injected a strong sense of innovation and improvisation into the more traditional forms of the game,” he added.
The replica apparel – including a full range of men’s, women’s and children’s apparel – will be available through Adidas worldwide retail distribution network.
Australian cricket joins Adidas stable of global partnerships with sporting teams and organisations including FIFA, the All Blacks and the British Lions.
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.
