MAM
Zee Sports ropes in Air India Express as title sponsor for Santosh Trophy
MUMBAI: The low cost international carrier Air India Express will sponsor 60th edition of Santosh Trophy. The tourney will be called Air India Express Santosh Trophy.
Zee Sports will telecast the 16 matches from the quarterfinals onwards live. John Helm and Russell Osman have been roped in as commentators.
The 60 th Santosh Trophy 2005 is being held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Kochi in Kerala.
The cluster-leg, which kicked off today, will go on till 10 November in Thiruvananthapuram and Calicut, while the final round with the quarterfinal league, semifinals and final would be held in Kochi from 11 November to 20 November. In total 32 states and government institutions will take part in this year’s tournament, informs an offical release.
The telecast package will include preview and review shows, half time match analysis and various studio programming. The coverage will involve more cameras, more replays, new commentators and a new graphic look.
With the aim of creating a distinctive identity for every major domestic tournament, a new logo of Air India Express Santosh Trophy was also unveiled.
Zee Sports mixes entertainment with sports again here. There will be music and dance performances by renowned bands during the half time and in between the two matches. Special performance by Zeebra’s will done to entertain the crowds before the start of each match.
Zee Sports has launched a special section on Indian football will on its website www.zeesports.co.in. This provides soccer fans with the latest team news, match scores, statistics and player profiles, as well as exclusive player interviews and photo galleries. There will be interactive sections, which will include chat rooms, video clips of matches, online games, wallpapers and ring tones, the release adds.
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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.
