MAM
Neo ropes in seven sponsors for French Open
MUMBAI: Following the announcement of the dual feed coverage for the French Open tennis Grand Slam, Neo Sports Broadcast has announced that it has got seven sponsors for the event which starts tomorrow 26 May 2013.
The co-presenting sponsors for the French Open this year are Renault and Micromax.
In addition to these, five associate sponsors have also signed on for the event. These are Cadbury, Carlsberg, Nokia, Coca Cola and Samsung Smart TV. The number of sponsors announced is amongst the highest for any Grand Slam in the country. With this, the broadcaster said that it is almost completely sold out on the French Open.
The dual feed innovation for the French Open this year ensures that both Neo Prime and Neo Sports will show live feeds from separate courts. Consequently, fans will not miss out on any of the top action in one of the most exciting Grand Slams of the year.
Viewers will also be able to catch daily build-up and post match analysis for the French Open with ‘First Serve’, the wraparound show for the event.
Neo Sports Broadcast COO Prasana Krishnan said, “The French Open in 2012 had the highest level of viewership for any Grand Slam. This year, we expect this to go even higher with the pioneering dual feed coverage. We are pleased to note that sponsors have bought into this vision and are supporting us in a big way”.
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Neo bolsters French Open coverage with a dual feed
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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.
