From cricket to Coldplay, one government is redefining how India consumes reside leisure.
As India’s leisure panorama undergoes seismic shifts, few executives are positioned as strategically as Sanjog Gupta. Considered one of three CEOs at JioStar – alongside Kiran Mani (CEO – Digital) and Kevin Vaz (CEO – Broadcast Leisure) – Gupta oversees sports activities and reside experiences throughout a sprawling empire that features Star Sports activities on tv, JioHotstar on digital, ESPN Cricinfo, and the corporate’s league-owning companies Mashal (Professional Kabaddi League) and Soccer [soccer] Sports activities Growth Restricted.
With over twenty years in media and leisure, Gupta has emerged as one of many architects of India’s fashionable sports activities ecosystem. His fingerprints are on marquee cricket properties like ICC cricket World Cups and the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket match, home leagues just like the PKL and Indian Tremendous League, and international occasions together with the Premier League and Wimbledon.
However Gupta’s ambitions prolong far past sports activities. In an interview with Selection, the manager outlined his imaginative and prescient for reworking JioStar right into a platform that delivers what he calls “infinite, hyper-personalized journeys” – a technique that marries sports activities aggregation with reside cultural experiences starting from Coldplay live shows to non secular celebrations.
Gupta’s method to content material funding rests on what he calls foundational ideas that inform each resolution at JioStar. “Stay sport in India is an aggregator of audiences like no different, so it serves as a large recruitment funnel for the platform,” he explains. This viewers aggregation creates what Gupta describes as a community impact that advantages all content material on the platform.
The second factor of his thesis anticipates large progress in India’s sports activities adoption. “A rustic of greater than a billion folks can be adopting sports activities each at a scale we now have by no means seen earlier than, and with a spread that we’ve by no means seen earlier than,” Gupta says, citing socioeconomic components together with rising middle-class mobility, elevated well being consciousness amongst mother and father, authorities recognition of sports activities’ smooth energy, and increasing non-public funding in leagues and infrastructure.
Maybe most crucially, Gupta emphasizes the distinctive monetization potential of sports activities followers. “The lifetime worth of a sports activities fan is sort of important for a platform,” he notes, describing a shopper journey that progresses from consideration to ardour to affiliation to motion – the ultimate stage encompassing merchandising, sports activities journey, and stadium attendance.
This funding philosophy not too long ago translated into a considerable dedication. Gupta revealed that JioStar is investing $500 million across production, marketing, and technology to boost its sports activities choices. “Our journey truly begins at that time [of rights acquisition] to develop followers for the property, to deepen fandom for that property, and to have the ability to extract disproportionate worth from that property,” he explains.
In 2022, the IPL rights were bought for $6.2 billion by the 2 entities who have since merged to form JioStar. The match serves as Gupta’s laboratory for testing broader platform methods. The 2025 season delivered unprecedented numbers: 1.19 billion complete attain (537 million on TV and 652 million on digital), representing the largest attain ever for IPL on the JioStar community. The match drove JioHotstar to 300 million subscribers, with 55.2 million peak concurrency and 840 billion minutes of complete watch-time. Notably, 47% of IPL viewers on Star Sports activities have been girls, whereas the IPL remaining alone attracted 426 million viewers.
The match’s success creates momentum that advantages different content material in what he calls “the shadow of a big, scaled aggregative occasion.” Following IPL’s conclusion, the World Take a look at Championship remaining between South Africa and Australia grew to become “probably the most watched non-India check match on a digital platform ever,” whereas the primary check of the England-India sequence achieved comparable milestones – each benefiting from IPL’s cross-promotional results.
Leisure content material receives comparable remedy. Gupta cites the strategic launch of “Felony Justice” throughout IPL’s remaining weeks for example of leveraging sports activities visitors for content material sampling. “We didn’t drop the total present at one go, however truly staggered it beginning [during] the IPL,” permitting the sequence to construct an viewers that might return for episodes launched after the match concluded.
This method goals to create what Gupta phrases “intimate, infinite journeys” for every consumer. “For each consumer who’s touchdown on the platform, the journey needs to be distinct and distinctive,” he says. The purpose is a platform that feels “as aggregative and as scaled as it’s, however as intimate and private as we would like it to be for each consumer.”
The holy grail, in keeping with Gupta: “Least effort, most curiosity, intimate and customized every time that she or he is logging on.”
Gupta’s mandate extends into reside experiences, a vertical that represents “the confluence of our experience in storytelling with our experience in serving reside scaled, aggregated audiences in sport.” The method targets customers’ twin needs for particular person expression and group belonging.
JioStar’s first main reside occasion – Coldplay’s Jan. 26 concert at the Narendra Modi Stadium – was strategically chosen for its cultural significance. “We consider that day, by advantage of being 26 January [India’s Republic Day], one of many greatest bands on the earth acting at one of many greatest stadiums on the earth would create what may very well be a cultural zeitgeist second,” Gupta explains.
The reside experiences technique encompasses each present occasions with scale potential and authentic cultural programming. Following profitable non secular celebrations for Maha Shivaratri and Rama Navami (the latter that includes Indian cinema legend Amitabh Bachchan as narrator), Gupta sees important alternative in India’s awakening live performance economic system.
“There’s a deep want to expertise, or make investments and spend on experiences that are really as soon as in a lifetime,” he observes, noting each the experiential worth and the “FOMO side” that drives viewers engagement.
Regardless of IPL’s combination success, Gupta acknowledges areas for enchancment. Regional language feeds within the Bhojpuri, Marathi, and Gujarati languages underperformed in comparison with Tamil and Telugu choices, largely because of discoverability points. “We weren’t capable of serve these feeds to customers who could have been excited about them, as a result of we weren’t capable of make them discoverable sufficient on the platform,” he admits.
Equally, new product options together with 4 FAST channels designed for lean-back viewing on linked TVs failed to achieve traction. These channels, organized by workforce affiliation or themes like “shut finishes” and “traditional video games,” suffered from the identical discoverability challenges.
“Whereas the aggregated expertise of the IPL delivered higher than anticipated numbers, there have been sure core constituent components of that have which weren’t found by customers in any respect and are literally crucial for the long run progress of the property,” Gupta displays.
Wanting towards the subsequent 5 years, Gupta’s technique stays anchored in these funding ideas. With the November 2024 “Suppose Sports activities: Unlocking India’s $130B Sports activities Potential” report by Google and Deloitte projecting the Indian sports activities sector to succeed in $130 billion by 2030, JioStar will proceed investing in properties that function viewers aggregators, profit from India’s sporting progress trajectory, and unlock the improved lifetime worth of sports activities followers.
The important thing metric stays easy: “Until such time as sports activities, sporting properties, sports activities rights, proceed to ship on these 4 tenets of the funding thesis, we’ll proceed to put money into them.”
For reside experiences, Gupta guarantees continued give attention to “moments of cultural zeitgeist” that supply each scale potential and “deep cultural significance.” Whether or not musical live shows or non secular celebrations, every occasion should fulfill twin standards of mass enchantment and significant cultural resonance.
As Gupta places it, the mission stays “making India a sporting nation” whereas realizing his imaginative and prescient of “serving one fan as many sports activities experiences, powered by the interaction of expertise and creativity.”
In an trade the place platform differentiation more and more depends upon personalization at scale, Gupta’s JioStar represents a captivating check case for whether or not sports activities can certainly function the last word viewers aggregator – and whether or not that aggregation can efficiently gasoline broader leisure ambitions throughout India’s large, numerous market.
