MAM
LaLiga launches first-ever campaign with Rohit Sharma as ambassador in India
MUMBAI: LaLiga, one of the most popular football leagues in the world, has launched an on-air campaign to promote the Spanish league in India with its brand ambassador, Rohit Sharma, vice-captain of India cricket in T20 and ODI format. The campaign has been launched to take the brand and the sport to a wider audience base in the country.
The 55-second campaign film features one of the batting greats of the modern era and LaLiga’s face in India, Rohit Sharma. He takes viewers through what LaLiga truly stands for: discipline, pride, precision and passion and talks about how “It’s not Football, it’s LaLiga.”
Conceptualised and produced by India On Track, the video ends with details about the broadcast destination for LaLiga in India – Facebook Watch. The campaign will have a 360 degree rollout across various platforms.
LaLiga India’s managing director, Jose Antonio Cachaza, said: “We have managed to carve a space for ourselves in the hearts of millions of football fans in India. We have also learned about the passion this country has for premium international sporting content and we have launched this campaign to take LaLiga closer to millions more. We have the perfect combination, with great content, an icon like Rohit Sharma as our ambassador and a strong broadcast partner like Facebook.”
LaLiga India’s brand ambassador Rohit Sharma, said, “As an athlete, I know that sports is not only about technique but also, passion, adrenaline, temperament, strategy and character. I believe football tests all of these attributes in an individual and whether you are playing or watching the sport, you tend to feel it running inside you.”
“I am extremely excited by this campaign as it helped me connect with LaLiga fans not only as a sportsperson but also as one of them. I believe that LaLiga drives you to play the sport and there can be no better testimony to a legendary league than this,” added Sharma, who is exclusively managed by IMG Reliance’s talent management vertical.
The launch of a video campaign is expected to increase knowledge among sports and football enthusiasts across the nation about the top-tier league and its work in the country.
LaLiga has undertaken several projects to understand the audience and the market better and to take the league closer to fans in the region. Through initiatives like bringing a LaLiga club, Girona FC to India, landmark broadcast partnership with Facebook to present all matches at no cost to fans, the launch of LaLiga Football Schools to impact the sport at a grassroots level.
It has also associated with Indian brands like BKT and Dream11 along with bringing onboard the first-ever non-football brand ambassador, Rohit Sharma, LaLiga has grown its fan base significantly in the country.
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.
