MAM
UEFA Europa League ropes in FedEx as main sponsor for 3 seasons
MUMBAI: FedEx Corp and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) have signed a three-season agreement in which FedEx will take the main sponsor position in the UEFA Europa League.
The sponsorship will commence with the start of the 2015/2016 season and will extend for three seasons through to 2017/2018. A major European cup competition, the UEFA Europa League spans 192 teams across 54 European nations, which aligns with FedEx presence and network in the region.
“As one of the most important European football Cup competitions, the UEFA Europa League is a perfect sponsorship for FedEx, which has a strong commitment to doing business across borders throughout the European region. The UEFA Europa League is an elite competition based on a foundation of grassroots football. It has a great mix of famous clubs and local teams, and reflects the genuine passion of fans across Europe. It is a great way for us to reinforce the commitment and passion that our employees demonstrate every day in all our markets across the region,” said FedEx Express Europe vice president, marketing and communications Andrew Self.
Passion, inspiration and performance will be key themes across all marketing activation and will be reinforced through pitch side, stadium and press conference branding. The sponsorship also extends into UEFA’s digital channels across desktop and mobile platforms. In addition, FedEx will deliver the trophy to the stadium for the final, where it will be hand-delivered to a UEFA delegate before making the journey to pitch side.
The sponsorship builds on FedEx’s extensive history of sports partnerships, including sponsorship of the ATP World Tour, 2014 Ryder Cup, PGA TOUR, and NFL.
“We welcome FedEx into the UEFA sponsor partner family, and we are looking forward to collaborating together throughout the duration of the sponsorship. It is very suitable to have a global brand such as FedEx securing the Main Partner sponsorship for the tournament’s new commercial concept,” said UEFA Events SA marketing director Guy-Laurent Epstein.
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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.
