MAM
Vodafone ends sponsorship of Australian cricket team
MUMBAI: Telecom major Vodafone has backed out of its sponsorship of Australian Test team, thereby bringing to an end its 11-year-old partnership with Cricket Australia.
The next summer‘s Test series against South Africa and Sri Lanka will be the last of Vodafone‘s sponsorship of Australian cricket team.
CA executive GM commercial Mike McKenna said the high-profile partnership was one of the most successful and long-running in Australian elite sport. But like all sports‘ sponsorships, there comes a time when the sponsor achieves its partnership objectives and moves on with new strategic priorities.
“We understand that Test cricket has helped Orange, 3 and Vodafone become Australian household names and we look forward to continuing to work with Vodafone next summer in what will be the final season of our successful relationship,” he added.
McKenna noted that the Vodafone partnership, which had progressively profiled the Orange, 3 and Vodafone brands, had always had particular meaning for Australian cricket after the Orange brand of that time leapt in to fill the breach when Test cricket sponsor, Ansett, crashed on the eve of the 2001 Test season, leaving cricket without a Test partner just weeks before the start of that summer.
“Our partner, via these brands, has helped us promote Test cricket and the sport is better for their long-term support,” he said.
CA will, meanwhile, go to market for a new home-market Australian Test cricket team sponsor from 2013-14 with an Ashes summer as the launching pad for the new relationship. CA adds that it believes the Australian team playing Test cricket at home is possibly the most valuable sports‘ sponsorship asset in Australia.
“Our research shows the Australian public loves Test cricket, regards cricket as the sound of summer and that interest in cricket goes through the roof when the traditional enemy, England, tours this country,” McKenna said.
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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.
