MAM
Disney Star onboards eleven sponsors for Wimbledon Championships 2024
Mumbai: As the 2024 Wimbledon Championships commences today, Disney Star announces an impressive lineup of sponsors for the world’s oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament. This year, eleven sponsors, including brands like Hyundai, House of Glenfiddich, Jaquar, Castrol, Kohler, Zepto, Amul, Xiaomi, LIC, Natural Diamond Council and Disney Adventure Cruise Line have joined to support the event so far.
“Wimbledon is one of the most coveted tennis championships, and we are thrilled by the sponsors who have come on board. The participation of these distinguished brands underscores the widespread appeal and prestige of this historic tournament. This diverse group of sponsors reflects the growing enthusiasm for tennis and emphasizes the importance of delivering varied content in today’s sports landscape. As the event unfolds, we look forward to providing an exceptional viewing experience for tennis fans across India,” said Disney Star head of network, advertising sales, Ajit Varghese.
The 2024 Wimbledon Championships promise thrilling tennis action on its historic grass courts. Reigning champions Carlos Alcaraz and Markéta Vondroušová will defend their titles, with Alcaraz coming off his maiden Wimbledon victory and Vondroušová making history as the first unseeded women’s singles champion in 2023.
Disney Star unveils a stellar roster of brand sponsors for the 2024 Wimbledon Championship, ensuring extensive visibility and engagement opportunities throughout the tournament. Excitement builds as this grand sporting spectacle unfolds, celebrating the essence of Wimbledon with valued partners and viewers.
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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.
