Speaking at the SVG India Summit 2026, Ishan Chatterjee, JioStar, Sports – CEO, outlined how India has become the epicentre of innovation in global sports broadcasting, driven by scale coupled with deep consumer engagement.
With the IPL reaching over a billion screens last season and JioHotstar setting a global digital concurrency record of 72.5 million viewers during the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 Final, he emphasized the importance of driving scale through relevance.
“Live sports has emerged as one of the only mediums that can aggregate consumers at this scale. Reaching 72.5 million people at once raises a question that matters far more than the number itself: what do you do with that attention? Scale without relevance is just reach.”
He explained how sports broadcasting, over the years, has evolved from one-way communication to personalisation.
“The first decade of sports broadcasting was defined by a ‘one size fits all’ broadcast feed where the match was a one-way dialogue between the rights holder and the consumer. With the growth of digital streaming, we moved away from that by personalising the viewing experience for large cohorts of fans through languages, multiple feeds, camera angles, graphics, and presentation formats. This matters to us because engaged viewers consume more content, stay longer, and become power users across our platforms. For example, over the last year, our regional language watch-time share has grown 2X. Our Bhojpuri and Haryanvi feeds grew 3X over the same period.”
In addition, he emphasized AI advancements can deliver offerings that are tailored to cohorts and individuals.
“With the advancements in artificial intelligence, we have an opportunity to take a fundamental leap – from serving aggregate cohorts to individual personas, where each fan can watch live sports in a way that feels made just for them.”
On the innovation front, he spoke about JioStar’s integration of AI and commerce on their platform.
“We have embedded multilingual conversational AI and voice search into the heart of how fans watch sport. A fan in Lucknow can ask, in Hindi, “What is Dhoni’s strike rate in finals?” and get an answer in seconds, without ever leaving the stream. No switching apps or searching, just by asking, in the language you think in. Through our integration with Swiggy, viewers can now order food within the JioHotstar app, moving from intent to transaction without breaking the viewing experience. We see this as an early signal of what a truly integrated sports platform can look like.”
Closing with a call to the global broadcast and technology community, Ishan noted that building a consumer experience of this ambition cannot be achieved by one company alone and requires collaboration across rights holders, broadcasters, technology partners, and creators.
“If you want to understand where sports broadcasting is going, look at India. Not as a market of the future, but as one that is already defining it.”
