MAM
Parrot Analytics launches Sports Demand to put rigour into soaring media rights market
LOS ANGELES: : Parrot Analytics, the media analytics firm known for pioneering streaming valuation, has launched Sports Demand, billed as the most advanced global sports analytics system. The tool is designed to arm leagues, teams, broadcasters, streamers and sponsors with data-driven insights to navigate the fast-inflating sports rights market.
Sports rights fees have surged in recent years, with Paramount’s $7.7 billion deal for UFC events, WWE’s $1.6 billion tie-up with ESPN, and the NFL’s equity-for-content swap with Disney underscoring the scale. Parrot says its system will allow buyers and sellers to measure fan engagement market by market, justify valuations, and extract stronger returns on investment.
“For the first time, decision-makers can weigh the impact of acquiring a sports league against investing in scripted series or films, within a single framework,” said Parrot Analytics chief executive Wared Seger. By integrating with the firm’s Demand360 platform, Sports Demand lets clients benchmark sports against TV shows, films and on-screen talent.
Capabilities include global fan mapping across 100 markets, integrated sports-entertainment benchmarking, empirical valuation models, content optimisation, and sponsor alignment analysis. Early adopters include leagues negotiating landmark streaming deals and operators launching direct-to-consumer sports services.
Seger argued that in an attention economy where sports compete directly with films and television for time and spend, “rigorous, standardised data is essential.”
Sports Demand is now available worldwide to Parrot Analytics’ enterprise clients, with dashboard and API access for seamless integration into rights, content and sponsorship strategies.
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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.
