Mumbai: JioStar has launched ‘The Winning Edge’, India’s first data-backed advertising playbook aimed at helping brands and media buyers unlock the full potential of live cricket as a marketing platform.
Developed in collaboration with Kantar, the playbook is based on billions of impression-level data points across marquee cricket properties and validated through extensive Brand Lift Studies. It offers actionable, outcome-driven insights designed to move beyond traditional advertising approaches.
The findings highlight the significant impact of live cricket advertising on JioStar. For new brands, campaigns delivered up to 6.9x higher brand awareness and up to 10.8x higher purchase intent compared to Kantar benchmarks. Established brands also saw strong gains, with up to 4x higher brand awareness and 4.9x higher purchase intent, reinforcing cricket’s role as both a launchpad and a long-term growth driver.
Anup Govindan, Head of Sales, Sports, JioStar said, “The Winning Edge, developed in partnership with Kantar, is built on rigorous, data-backed analysis of how real brands have performed on our platform across categories, objectives, budgets, formats, and tournament phases. T
he study reaffirms that when it comes to driving real outcomes such as awareness, consideration, and purchase intent, nothing matches the intensity, scale, and impact of live cricket. The depth of attention and emotional engagement during live moments creates a multiplier effect that non-live environments simply cannot replicate.”
Soumya Mohanty, MD, and Chief Client & Solutions Officer at Kantar South Asia added, “Numerous Kantar Brand Lift Studies have demonstrated the incremental impact of Live Cricket Advertising, with results consistently ranking at the topend of Kantar’s Brand Lift database. This playbook distils those insights into actionable media planning and creative recommendations to help advertisers drive stronger outcomes in Live Cricket environments.”
A key insight from the playbook is the growing importance of multi-screen strategies. Brands that activated campaigns across Linear TV, Connected TV, and mobile simultaneously recorded up to 7x higher purchase intent compared to single-platform campaigns, with minimal audience overlap ensuring incremental reach. Combining video and display formats further amplified results, delivering up to 7.4x higher brand awareness.
The study also underscores the effectiveness of sponsorship-led strategies over standalone inventory buys. Brands with formal sponsorships achieved up to 9x higher purchase intent and 8x higher ad awareness. Additionally, incorporating pre- and post-live programming into campaign strategies delivered up to 2.1x incremental aided awareness.
Further, the playbook identifies high-impact in-match moments—such as Super 4s, Super 6s, Decision Review System (DRS) calls, and fall of wickets—as critical opportunities for contextual advertising. Campaigns aligned with these moments recorded significant uplifts in brand salience, awareness, and recall.
With live cricket continuing to command some of the largest and most engaged audiences in India, ‘The Winning Edge’ positions itself as a strategic guide for brands to leverage data-driven insights, maximise campaign effectiveness, and drive measurable business outcomes in sports marketing.
