MAM
JioStar unveils ‘The Winning Edge’ playbook for live cricket advertisers
Data-led guide shows multi-screen, sponsorship strategies drive higher impact
MUMBAI: JioStar has launched ‘The Winning Edge’, a data-backed advertising playbook aimed at helping brands maximise impact on live cricket, positioning the sport as one of the most powerful marketing platforms in India.
Built using billions of impression-level data points across marquee cricket properties and validated through studies by Kantar, the playbook offers practical insights into how brands can drive measurable outcomes such as awareness, recall and purchase intent.
The findings make a strong case for live cricket as a growth engine for both new and established brands. According to the report, new advertisers on live cricket campaigns saw up to 6.9 times higher brand awareness and up to 10.8 times higher purchase intent compared to industry benchmarks. Established brands also recorded gains, with up to four times higher awareness and nearly five times higher purchase intent.
Speaking about the initiative, JioStar head of sales sports Anup Govindan said, “The Winning Edge, developed in partnership with Kantar, is built on rigorous, data-backed analysis of how real brands have performed on our platform across categories, objectives, budgets, formats and tournament phases. The study reaffirms that when it comes to driving real outcomes such as awareness, consideration and purchase intent, nothing matches the intensity, scale and impact of live cricket. The depth of attention and emotional engagement during live moments creates a multiplier effect that non-live environments simply cannot replicate.”
One of the standout insights is the advantage of multi-screen strategies. Campaigns that ran simultaneously across linear TV, connected TV and mobile delivered up to seven times higher purchase intent than single-platform campaigns, with minimal audience overlap ensuring incremental reach.
The playbook also highlights the impact of combining formats. Brands using both video and display formats saw up to 7.4 times higher brand awareness compared to those relying on video alone.
Sponsorships emerged as another key lever. Brands with formal sponsorship deals recorded up to nine times higher purchase intent and up to eight times higher ad awareness than those opting only for standard inventory buys. Adding pre and post live studio programming further boosted aided awareness by up to 2.1 times.
Crucially, the report identifies high-impact in-match moments such as Super 4s, Super 6s, DRS and fall of wickets as prime opportunities for brands. Campaigns aligned with these moments delivered uplifts of up to 10 times in awareness and up to seven times in recall, reinforcing the value of contextual advertising.
Echoing these findings, Kantar managing director and chief client & solutions officer Soumya Mohanty said, “Numerous Kantar Brand Lift Studies have demonstrated the incremental impact of live cricket advertising, with results consistently ranking at the top end of Kantar’s Brand Lift database. This playbook distils those insights into actionable media planning and creative recommendations to help advertisers drive stronger outcomes in live cricket environments.”
With live cricket continuing to draw massive, highly engaged audiences, JioStar is positioning ‘The Winning Edge’ as a blueprint for brands looking to move beyond visibility and towards measurable impact.
As the competition for consumer attention intensifies, the message is clear. In the world of sports marketing, playing smart may matter just as much as showing up.
MUMBAI: In India’s fast-moving payments race, Visa has just swiped in a new leader. The company has named Suresh Sethi as its India country head, marking a key leadership shift as it sharpens its focus on digital payments growth in the market. Sethi steps into the role following his recent exit from Protean eGov Technologies, where he served as chief executive officer. He succeeds Sandeep Ghosh, who has moved on after more than four years at Visa to pursue an external opportunity.
The appointment comes at a time when Visa is doubling down on its expansion strategy across India and the wider region, deepening partnerships and accelerating adoption in an increasingly competitive digital payments ecosystem.
Sethi brings with him a broad, cross-market perspective shaped by decades of experience across corporate banking, retail financial services, mobile money and large-scale government technology initiatives. He began his career at Citigroup, where he spent 14 years working across India, Africa, South America and the United States, focusing on transaction banking services within the corporate bank.
His appointment signals a blend of institutional experience and market familiarity qualities that could prove critical as Visa navigates a landscape where fintech innovation, regulatory evolution and consumer adoption are all accelerating at once.
As digital payments in India continue to scale rapidly, the leadership change underscores a simple reality, in a market where every tap, scan and swipe counts, who leads the charge can matter just as much as the technology itself.
