Bali: In a compelling fireside chat at the APOS 2025 Summit in Bali, Sanjog Gupta, CEO – Sports & Live Experiences at JioStar, laid out a powerful narrative on how India’s sports landscape is not only evolving rapidly but is also defining new paradigms for global media and entertainment economies. Speaking with conviction and clarity, Gupta articulated how JioStar is redefining content consumption by fusing scale, personalization, and purpose.
“India’s growing influence in sport is nothing but a reflection of India’s growing significance on the global stage, driven by a strong consumption-oriented economy,” Gupta asserted, opening the session with a macro view of India’s rising global stature.
At the heart of the conversation was the record-breaking success of TATA IPL 2025, which Gupta said reached over one billion viewers across platforms. But more significantly, he noted, it also became “the most monetized sporting event ever in India”, across both advertising and subscription revenue — setting a new benchmark for sports broadcasting and digital monetization.
Gupta contextualized this success within a broader, long-term strategy.
“Over the last decade and a half, Star and now JioStar has actually been the biggest private investor in Indian sport and in Indian media and entertainment… a media consumption economy much larger in scale than anything that could have been imagined.”
He highlighted the over $500 million investment in marketing, production, and technology — over and above rights acquisition — made to grow sports properties.
“What gets missed is the sheer investment… to grow those properties,” he emphasized, calling it a conscious bet on India’s digital-first, content-hungry demographic.
Sports as a Gateway to the Broader Content Ecosystem
One of the most strategic insights shared during the chat was how sports acts as an onboarding engine for wider content engagement.
“We believe sports serves as a recruitment funnel to bring in viewers and fans at scale,” said Gupta, referencing how shows like Criminal Justice leveraged the IPL to amplify their launch.
This content funnel thinking is at the core of JioStar’s hybrid strategy.
“Our mission wasn’t to incrementally change the landscape. It was to completely shift the way consumers perceive paying for content,” Gupta explained, comparing their model to modern retail — where consumers sample before committing.
Rather than putting up a paywall upfront, Gupta described a “try before you pay” user journey, akin to exploring items in a store.
“It’s not pay at the gate… you sample enough and then choose to pay for deeper engagement.”
Infinite Journeys, Not One Stream for All
The personalisation philosophy that powers JioStar’s platform was another key theme.
“Don’t look to serve many fans as one but look to serve almost each fan as many,” Gupta said, highlighting how “infinite, hyper-personalized journeys” are the future of sports streaming.
This ethos is already evident in JioStar’s expansion of niche and regional sports, like the English Premier League, which has seen a 3.5x growth over five years thanks to localisation in regional languages. Similarly, indigenous sports like Kabaddi are being professionalised and positioned for year-round engagement.
“We don’t want to be known for a single content genre… Our objective with Kabaddi is for the sport itself to grow,” said Gupta, reaffirming JioStar’s commitment to a diversified sports portfolio.
Designing for the New India
Gupta shared JioStar’s four-pillar product design approach:
“We are building a platform with infinite consumer journeys… Inclusive, Intuitive, Interactive, and Immersive.”
He also broke down the “digital media economy” into four phases: Attention, Passion, Affiliation, and Action, noting that no other content genre activates all four like Live Sports.
Driving this transformation, he said, are five key growth enablers:
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Accelerated digitisation
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Consumer-centric freemium models
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Tech-led delivery for low-connectivity environments
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Rising middle-class aspirations
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Cultural duality of self-expression and community belonging
As APOS 2025 continues to explore the future of media and tech in Asia, Sanjog Gupta’s fireside chat stood out for its visionary framing, data-backed insights, and a clear strategic blueprint for how sports — and sport-led content ecosystems — will power the next wave of digital growth in India and beyond.
“This isn’t about broadcasting sports,” Gupta concluded.
“It’s about reshaping how people experience entertainment — personally, meaningfully, and at massive scale.”
