MAM
Cricket Australia looks to drive with Toyota sponsorship
MUMBAI: Cricket Australia has got Toyota Australia on board as a new gold sponsor and official automotive partner.
The deal comes close on the heels of Vodafone ending its 11-year association with Australian cricket team.
Under the new five-year deal, Toyota will support the Australian cricket team, State Cricket Associations and the KFC T20 Big Bash League until mid-2017.
Toyota will supply more than 100 vehicles, including the all-new Camry Hybrid, to many of Cricket Australia’s coaches and administrators.
The partnership extends Toyota’s official presence in Australian sport beyond its highly successful involvement with the major football codes.
Cricket Australia‘s Executive General Manager – Commercial Mike McKenna said, “Australian cricket is thrilled to partner with Toyota, an Australian manufacturer and a business with a strong track record of support for Australian sport. Australian cricket is proud to support Toyota’s environmental goals and initially half our State Association and Cricket Australia fleet will be Toyota hybrid vehicles. We will work with Toyota on opportunities to realise an all-hybrid fleet in the coming years.”
Toyota’s executive director sales and marketing Matthew Callachor said the company was keen to widen its sponsorship portfolio by forming a progressive association with one of Australia’s most popular sports.
“Cricket is one of the most played and watched sports in Australia and we are looking forward to another long-term and successful partnership,” he said.
Callachor said the skills, commitment and passion of the Australian cricket team were attributes shared by Toyota and its 4,200 employees in Australia.
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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.
