MAM
From cheers to cha ching Bigcity bets on Fanforward for sports ROI
MUMBAI: Cricket season has never lacked noise, but proof has always been quieter. With the T20 World Cup and IPL looming large, Bigcity Promotions has launched Fanforward, a new sports marketing platform that promises to answer the question brands dread most after match day: what did we actually get back?
Positioned as a first-of-its-kind solution, Fanforward is built to help brands move beyond reach and impressions, translating sponsorship and advertising spends into measurable outcomes. For marketers juggling compressed timelines, scattered activation tools and an ocean of distracted fans, the platform aims to simplify execution while sharpening accountability.
At its core, Fanforward brings sports-led engagement formats, rewards integration and campaign measurement into a single system. Brands can build interactive experiences around live sporting moments and track them against clear business metrics, including sales impact, revenue generated, engagement levels, visibility and first-party data opt-ins. The intent is to convert passive viewers into active participants, and fleeting attention into tangible action.
The platform leans heavily on Bigcity’s track record, drawing on over 18 years of running large-scale, cricket-linked campaigns. That experience has shaped Fanforward to handle peak-season pressures, reduce reliance on multiple partners and offer a clearer line of sight from fan engagement to commercial returns.
“Sports marketing today is high-stakes and high-spend, but clarity on outcomes often arrives too late, if at all,” said Bigcity Promotions co-founder Vikas Shah. He noted that Fanforward is designed to inject speed and precision into a space long plagued by fragmentation, allowing brands to treat cricket season not as a branding ritual, but as a measurable growth window.
As cricket once again takes centre stage, Fanforward enters the field with a straightforward proposition, if fans are already watching, brands should know exactly what the applause is worth.
AD Agencies
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.
