Ad Campaigns
Entertainers Cricket League opens bids for two new teams after blockbuster debut
Mumbai: Following the massive success of its inaugural season, the Entertainers Cricket League (ECL) is expanding by adding two new franchise teams for the upcoming second season. This expansion presents an exciting opportunity for investors to be part of one of the fastest-growing leagues in the country, as the tender process is now officially open. Prospective team owners must register by 25 October 2024, with the auction set for 6 November 2024.
The ECL captivated a fan base of over 700 million across digital platforms during its debut season, blending cricket with entertainment and bringing together social media superstars, entertainers, and fans from around the world. The league’s fast-paced T10 format, held at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium from 13-22 September 2024, achieved impressive metrics, including 506,000 peak concurrent viewers on YouTube, 20.56 million TV viewers, and 600 million minutes of watch time.
ECL founder, Himanshu Chandnani expressed his excitement about the league’s growth: “The incredible response from fans, sponsors, and entertainers during the first season made it clear that ECL is more than just a cricket league—it’s a movement. By introducing two new teams, we’re giving even more stakeholders a chance to be part of this revolutionary format. The growth potential of ECL is massive, and this expansion offers a rare opportunity to tap into an audience that spans across sports and entertainment alike.”
Key Details for Expansion and Tender Process
– Registration Deadline: 25 October 2024
– Registration Fee: Rs 51,000 + GST, with bidding starting at Rs 3 crore
– Auction Date: 6 November 2024
– Tender Guidelines: Available upon request
– Contact for Information: contact@eclt10.in
The ECL aims to expand to eight teams, welcoming business leaders, celebrities, sports enthusiasts, and social media icons to participate in its growth. The two new franchises will help balance the league, create more matches, and provide opportunities for entertainers and cricket enthusiasts. The winning bidders will also have the opportunity to choose their team’s city, adding a personalized touch to their franchise.
The league’s inaugural season saw six teams—Haryanvi Hunters, Lucknow Lions, Punjab Veers, Dynamic Delhi, Bangalore Bashers, and Mumbai Disruptors—compete for the championship. The final match concluded with Elvish Yadav’s Haryanvi Hunters defeating Anurag Dwivedi’s Lucknow Lions by eight wickets, solidifying the league’s reputation for delivering thrilling moments in cricketainment.
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.
