MAM
ESPN Star Sports targets Rs 2 bn from India-England series
MUMBAI: Sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports (ESS) is eyeing ad revenue of Rs 2 billion from the India-England series.
The series, involving four Tests, five ODIs and two T20s, has been billed as “revenge” series by ESS hoping to cash in on the rivalry that will help it attract more eyeballs and the moolah as well.
Team India had faced severe drubbing when it had toured England last year. The Mahendra Singh Dhoni-led team had to face a 4-0 whitewash in Tests while it had lost the 5-match ODI series by 3-0 by managing to tie one match. The Men in Blue had also lost the lone T20 match.
The sports broadcaster is banking on the Indian team’s track record of doing well in home conditions to deliver good viewership.
ESS is broadcasting the series as part of an understanding with sister concern and BCCI media rights partner Star India, which had acquired the BCCI rights for a whopping Rs 38.51 billion till 2018.
“We have sold out ad inventory for Test matches. Now we are focussing on ODIs and T20 matches,” ESPN Software India executive vice president and head of ad sales Sanjay Kailash tells Indiantelevision.com.
He evaded questions about ad revenue target set by the broadcaster. “We don’t share financial numbers,” Kailash said.
However, The Exchange Principal Partner Jai Lala feels that the sportscaster will have to settle for ad revenue between Rs 1.5 to Rs 1.75 billion. “I think Rs 2 billion is too high. They should do around Rs 1.5 to 1.75 billion,” Lala said.
Kailash feels that the Test series has done well as far as advertisement is concerned considering the fact that it comes after Diwali, a period when most of the advertisers exhaust a large chunk of their ad spends.
“Considering that the Test series is coming after Diwali there were apprehensions as to what kind of response it will get. However, we have managed to rope in eight sponsors for the Test series,” he added.
The eight sponsors for the Test matches include Tata DoCoMo and Havells as joint-presenting sponsors while Maruti Suzuki, Samsung, Perfetti, Nokia, ITC and Microsoft are associate sponsors.
Out of the eight sponsors, Nokia, Havells, Maruti Suzuki and Tata DoCoMo had signed deals for the entire cricket season till the Australia series in February next year. According to a report, ESS has already mopped up Rs 2.8 billion from the four ad deals.
Lala feels that the broadcaster’s decision to do advertising deals for the entire season has helped it de-risk itself from volatility.
The News Corp-owned broadcaster has already sold an estimated 50-60 per cent of the inventory for the T20 and ODI matches that will take place in January after the India-Pakistan series that is scheduled to take place from 25 December to 6 January.
The sportscaster is yet to close a deal for the upcoming India-Pakistan series, which is being sold separately and is not part of the deal done for the entire cricket season.
“The demand for T20s and ODIs will start building up after the first week of December. We already have four on board for the entire season,” Kailash asserted.
While Kailash refused to talk about numbers, Lala said that the sportscaster had sold ad inventory at Rs 60,000 per 10 second for Tests. For ODIs, ESS was looking at Rs 300,000 and for T20s the broadcaster was eyeing Rs 450,000.
Kailash also emphasised that ESS wants to attract more viewers towards Test cricket. A step in that direction was the sportscaster’s decision to have a dedicated Hindi feed on Star Cricket which will run parallel to English commentary on Star Sports.
“We want to attract more and more viewers to grow the franchise of Cricket. The idea is to broad base the sport even more and add more people to watching cricket and monetise it,” he noted.
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.
