MAM
Zee Sports to spend Rs 70 million on marketing Indian football
MUMBAI: A month after acquiring the rights for India football from the All India Football Federation (AIFF), Zee Sports is going all out to promote the sport that it believes has in the past not been given the desired marketing thrust.
The channel has earmarked Rs 70 million towards marketing the event in the first year, Zee Sports vice president marketing Gaurav Seth tells Indiantelevision.com. The campaign, which kicked off earlier this month, will last till May.
Zee Sports is also exploring the option of a brand ambassador, says Seth. The person chosen could be from the world of Bollywood, Indian television or even football. He ruled out choosing a cricketer for the role.
Zee Sports has also created a cheerleading team called the ZeeBras. Says Seth, “The point of the campaign is to asociate football with glamour. The sport needs a facelift in India. For this purpose we have created a cheerleading team called the ZeeBras. This squad of eight girls is being featured in our outdoor campaign and also in print ads.” The print campaign kicks off today 17 October.
“The ZeeBras is a take of from how sport is pushed in America. Cheerleading squads play a major role in motivating fans interest. In India we will also be having screenings in pubs in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. We believe that football is one sport that has huge potential to grow in these cities apart from Goa, Kerala and West Bengal where it is already huge. In Goa we will be having mobile vans visiting youth hangouts like nightclubs, malls and cineplexes. The aim is to spread the message about the Federation Cup and get people to come to the stadiums. We will be taking football players and the ZeeBras squad to these spots to build up interest,” adds Seth.
The first event of the Federation Cup takes place in Goa from 19-30 October 2005. The next tournament is the Santosh Trophy which takes place at the end of next month.
Zee Sports has tied up with radio station Red FM to push the event. There will be score updates and also RJs mentioning the event. Zee Sports has also created a microsite on Indian football. Here visitors can get profiles of the players and clubs as well as match schedules.
Zee Sports is also hoping to create stars out of key players. The on air campaign is being done keeping this in mind. In the long term, the channel is hoping that the marketing push will result in fans supporting individual clubs.
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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.
