MAM
NxGn Sports Interactive appoints Sunil Chhetri as brand ambassador for Twelfth Man
MUMBAI: Sunil Chhetri has been announced as the official brand ambassador of Twelfth Man – a fantasy football platform by NcGn Sports that allows users to compete in a large variety of contests against other users for free or by paying entry fees to join a prize pool. Contest types include DFS, league and trivia, with more contests and features to be added soon.
NxGn Sports Interactive Pvt Ltd founder and CEO Kush Desai said, “When you think 'Indian football', you think of Sunil Chhetri. I was clear from the very beginning that, if we want to grow Twelfth Man as an overall football community, he has to be the face of the app. It has been a wonderful experience working with India’s best football icon on this venture. I’m looking forward to an exciting journey ahead as we enable Indian football fans to truly live the game through fantasy football!”
Twelfth Man is a response to the rapidly growing Indian football community. It gives the fans an opportunity to actively engage with the game. They can create a team of their favourite players and make transfers, sign fresh talent, and compete in national as well as international leagues.
And who better than Indian football legend Sunil Chhetri as the face of the brand.
Popularly known as Captain Fantastic, Chhetri primarily plays as a striker and captains both the Indian Super League side Bengaluru FC and the Indian national team. He has scored the second-highest number of goals in international matches among active male players, after Cristiano Ronaldo. He is both the most-capped player and all-time top goal scorer for the Indian national team, with 72 goals in 115 appearances.
Sharing his experience with Twelfth Man, Chhetri said, “I’m very happy to be a part of the Twelfth Man team. They are doing a commendable job at presenting this platform to the football lovers of the country, and I think our common love for the game is going to result in some impressive developments for the football community.”
Twelfth Man has appointed White Rivers Media as its digital creative agency.
White Rivers Media co-founder and CEO Shrenik Gandhi said, “Fantasy gaming as an industry has seen hockey stick growth in the last few quarters. Having said that, fantasy football as a category is in its sunrise stage of growth. So we look forward to this journey with Twelfth Man to make Indian football shine through this platform, and who better than Sunil Chettri to #LiveTheGame!”
With the scope and scale of this mandate, the agency will be responsible for crafting the digital experience of the brand using impactful video and social content, programmatic media buying and innovative associations.
The Twelfth Man app was developed by Inheritx Solutions in a minimal turnaround time while maintaining high standards of quality.
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.
