Sports
JioStar secures 27 sponsors for IPL 2026, defying global headwinds
From AI tools to electric vehicles, India’s biggest cricket broadcaster has assembled a full house of brand partners across 27 categories
MUMBAI: JioStar has stitched together a 27-brand sponsor roster for the 2026 Tata IPL season, a lineup that stretches from artificial intelligence and consumer electronics to electric vehicles and fast-moving consumer goods, and has done so against a global macroeconomic backdrop that has rattled advertising budgets far beyond India’s borders.
At the top of the billing, Google Search AI Mode has signed on as a co-presenting sponsor, a first for artificial intelligence as a category in Indian cricket advertising and a sign of how fast the technology is muscling into mass-market culture. Alongside it are Campa Energy and Havells and Lloyd as co-presenting sponsors, with Birla Opus, Hero MotoCorp and Amazon.in holding the co-powered tier.
The associate sponsor band is even more eclectic. AMFI, Asian Paints, Vimal Elaichi, SuperMoney, MRF, Flipkart Minutes, Gillette, Vida, RuPay, Mondelez, Mother Dairy, Groww, Rapido, Muthoot Finance, Sunfeast YiPPee!, Google Pay, TVS EV, Angel One and Campa Sure have all signed up. Amul will present the Cricket Live show, while Google Search AI Mode takes the Match Centre Live show, a neat double for the search giant.
The mix is telling: legacy Indian conglomerates sit alongside new-age fintech platforms; a dairy cooperative shares screen space with an AI-powered search engine. Few properties in Indian media can claim that kind of categorical range.
Anup Govindan, head of sales, sports at JioStar, did not shy away from the macro context. “The strength and diversity of this year’s sponsor line-up reflects the continued confidence advertisers place in JioStar. Following India’s historic ICC T20 World Cup triumph and the emergence of a new galaxy of stars, fans will now see these heroes back in action across franchises, making the Tata IPL an incredibly compelling proposition, one that brands have been quick to recognise.”
He added: “What’s particularly encouraging is that this confidence has held firm even against a challenging global macroeconomic backdrop. The commitment our partners have shown is a powerful testament to the unmatched value the Tata IPL on the JioStar network delivers.”
JioStar’s pitch to advertisers rests on scale that is difficult to argue with. Its television network and streaming service together reach more than 750 million viewers each week, a combined audience that makes it one of the largest unified sports platforms on earth. The broadcaster is betting that its cross-screen ecosystem, spanning immersive formats on connected televisions to personalised mobile experiences, will make the 2026 edition the most-watched IPL yet.
For brands, the arithmetic is straightforward. In a fragmented media landscape where audiences scatter across dozens of platforms, a property that can still command a unified mass audience and do it live, in sport, with the emotional heat of the IPL, is an increasingly rare thing. Twenty-seven of them, from Groww to Gillette, have decided it is worth paying for.
