JioStar's $500 mn powers IPL into India's top monetized sport

The 2025 IPL season saw participation of over 425 advertisers, including 270 first-time brands

- Gaurav Laghate

With a staggering 1.19 billion viewers and over 514 billion minutes of watch time, Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 has set a new benchmark for live sports in India. But behind the record numbers is a strategic gamble that Sanjog Gupta, chief executive—sports and live experiences, JioStar, says goes far beyond cricket.

Speaking at the APOS 2025 summit in Bali, Gupta said the company pumped over $500 million to build a platform-led sports ecosystem, in addition to the rights acquisition costs, over the past 15 years.

"While numbers around acquisition prices for sports rights tend to be thrown around a lot, what at times gets missed is the sheer investment that a network such as ours has made to grow those properties," Gupta said. That cumulative investment across marketing, production and technology over the last decade and a half has crossed half a billion dollars. "That is outside of what we paid for the acquisition of rights."