At the SVG Summit 2025, Sanjog Gupta, CEO – Sports & Live Experiences at JioStar, delivered a landmark keynote outlining JioStar’s game-changing merger, record OTT growth, and the launch of two major initiatives — a new Live Experiences vertical aimed at culture-shaping fan events, and MaxView 2.0, the AI-powered, immersive mobile sports viewing format.
Gupta celebrated JioStar’s dominance across TV and digital sports viewership, and called on the industry to reimagine fan experiences through four expectations that drive JioStar’s vision: consumer obsession, bold humility, creativity-first environments, and flawless execution.
A year of massive change across media, streaming, and sports
Gupta emphasized how much the landscape has changed in just a year — from streaming wars to the creation of JioStar, and exponential growth across OTT and Pay TV. He said “It has barely been a year since we met at the inaugural edition of SVG India… but it feels like a different time. So much has changed,” he said, and proceeded to list the three most significant developments:
“When we met last, Disney Star & Viacom18/JioCinema were locked in a heated battle… today we have JioStar – the ultimate combination of Star’s Creativity and Jio’s Connectivity, determined to offer consumers infinite possibilities and shape the nation’s consciousness.
“When we met last, the total size of the OTT subscriber base in India was estimated at 110 million… today, JioHotstar has 280 million subscribers.
“When we met last, the Pay TV ecosystem had just started proving the doomsday forecasters wrong. India wasn’t going to follow the trend of other markets where Pay TV is either dead or dying. Today, the Star network has added 3 million homes as new subscribers in less than 2 months.”
Merging at record speed, shattering viewership benchmarks
Gupta highlighted how JioStar merged two of India’s biggest platforms in under 90 days and went on to dominate cricket viewership records across TV and digital. He said, “Disney+ Hotstar and Jio Cinema merged as a single platform – JioHotstar – in less than 90 days. Less than 90 days to merge two platforms which both had on an average 250 million users a month. JioStar broke every Cricket viewership record across TV and Digital – most watched test series ever, highest-ever rated multi-nation ODI tournament, highest-ever live concurrency for a sporting event, biggest ever WPL, strongest ever start to the IPL…”
Expanding into shared passion with Live Experiences
Gupta announced the launch of JioStar’s new business vertical, ‘Live Experiences’, to extend the brand beyond screens and into real-world cultural events. He said, “Live Experiences looks to combine the aggregate power of collective celebrations, shared passion and communal belonging with culture-shaping storytelling and next generation engagement features.”
Applause for teams, and ‘much bigger ambitions in creativity and tech’: Sanjog Gupta
While taking a moment to acknowledge and applaud the achievements of the team, Gupta was quick to remind the audience that JioStar is just beginning its journey and has much bigger plans. “Why don’t we give the amazing team at JioStar, all our partners and our collaborators a big round of applause, for doing what not many would have even dreamt of?”
“But,” he said, adding, “on that congratulatory note, let me remind you that we are just getting started… seriously, we are just 3 months new. And we have ambitions in creativity and technology, which we haven’t even started speaking about yet.”
Dreaming beyond the imaginable: Gupta’s belief in untapped potential
Sanjog Gupta spoke about the company’s belief in limitless possibilities, driven by technology and imagination, and warned that the future belongs to those who constantly evolve. “We believe there is immense headroom for growth. That there is untapped transformative capacity. That the potential of creativity is limitless. And that technology can enable what isn’t even being imagined. That we are truly what we can dream.
He added that the world was changing at a fast pace, and belief is that tomorrow will look “nothing like the world of today. Because the one constant is change and change has never been more rapid. What was trendy yesterday is obsolete today. Who was cool yesterday is a has-been today. Where there was growth yesterday, it’s gone today. Just look around you and think back even 5 years, does your world look anything like the world you knew?”
Reimagining tomorrow: The industry’s responsibility
He urged the media and sports ecosystem to not just respond to change but actively shape the future. “And all of us, as we serve today, also have to shape tomorrow. Otherwise, the future may forsake us. Tomorrow has to be progressively re-imagined and then re-shaped.”
JioStar is redefining fan engagement with MaxView 2.0 and its new Live Experiences vertical.
MaxView 2.0 offers an AI-powered, mobile-first sports viewing interface with intuitive swipe-up access to key match moments and swipe-left multi-angle, HeroCam perspectives—delivering a seamless, immersive experience without leaving the live game.
The Live Experiences vertical brings fans together through culture-shaping storytelling, shared passion, and next-gen interactive events, bridging digital and real-world celebration like never before.
Four expectations that define JioStar’s mission and mindset
Gupta laid out four guiding principles that JioStar expects from itself and its collaborators — consumer obsession, bold humility, attraction to creativity, and relentless execution.
Expectation 1: Obsess over the consumer:
The consumer must be the focal point of all innovation, Gupta said — their attention and passion are investments that must deliver returns. “Our first expectation is to think Consumer night and day,” he said, adding, “It is critical that we define who we are ideating, innovating, executing for. We need to know enough about them. We need to peak into their lives. Consumers mostly don’t know what they want but if you look hard enough they give out enough signals for what they might.
He said it is important that “We … know how we can satisfy and delight them. The consumer is making an investment with his/her attention and particularly in our case, with his/her passion. We need to ensure that his/her investment is yielding a solid return.”
Expectation 2: Be bold, nimble, and humble
JioStar embraces ambitious goals, adapts rapidly, and stays grounded through both wins and failures. “I don’t want to turn this into a motivational talk but I think it is abundantly clear from our actions over the last few months that we love audacious goals,” Gupta said, adding, “We look to constantly challenge status quo,” he said, adding, “We also want to pivot quickly when we see an opportunity or a gap in delivery. And most of all, be humble… no one can assure a result.
“In the words of Winston Churchill – Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage that counts. So treat success and failure as moments in an evolutionary curve,” he said.
Expectation 3: Chase creativity, not just ideas
Instead of trying to own every idea, Gupta said the goal is to build an environment that attracts them. “I’d rather be someone who people come to with their best ideas than the guy with the best ideas. Now you can say that why not both. Well, great if you can be! But if there was a choice, I’d rather foster an environment which attracts ideas.
“Because,” he added, “you can barely influence where the next big idea will come from or what it will be, but you can influence whether or not it will come to you.”
Expectation 4: Execute relentlessly, improve constantly
Execution is what brings ideas to life. Gupta cautioned that even brilliant concepts can fail without sharp, detail-driven delivery. “Great ideas die at the altar of poor execution. I can’t tell you how many ideas don’t get approved because the ideator didn’t put together a good deck. A dead pixel can ruin the entire frame. I don’t want you to take this as a nod to the desire for perfection. It’s not.
“In today’s world, it is perfectly reasonable to put out a product which isn’t perfect but will get chiseled into greatness with feedback. But even in that case, you have to be relentless about improvements and about defining what successful execution looks like, including all that you need to do to take the idea to its consumers and meet them where they are.”
MaxView 2.0: Taking immersive mobile viewing to the next level
Gupta introduced MaxView 2.0 as the next evolution in mobile-first sports streaming, tailored for intuitive fan engagement and powered by AI. “We developed a highly intuitive mobile experience called MaxView and launched its latest and highly evolved version, powered by AI, for the first time on IPL 2025.”
The latest rollout includes powerful new swipe-based features that make it easier for users to navigate and personalize their live match experience. Gupta said, “Now you can swipe up while watching MaxView to catch all the key moments of the match as short form clips… just keep swiping to skim through the moments… and with just one tap, return to the live game.”
Another standout feature is the ability to switch camera perspectives in real time — putting the fan in control of how they view the match. “We have a swipe left feature, which allows you to watch the live action from any perspective that you want to watch it from. From different camera angles, from different places in the field, even feeds which are specially created for you. So if you’re watching a RCB and MI live game and you want to watch what Rohit Sharma is up to in a certain moment or what they are doing is happening in a certain moment, all you need to do is swipe left, you get the HeroCam, you can watch what they’re doing and you can swipe right and go back to the live game.”
Gupta summed up the product’s ambition with a clear goal. “The ambition,” he said, “is to genuinely make the viewing experience as immersive as possible.”
MaxView – Mega experience on a mini screen, because the future is personal
Early feedback suggests MaxView 2.0 is already changing the way fans interact with sports content on mobile. Gupta highlighted its engagement success and real-world relevance. “Just to give you a sense of what’s happened since we launched MaxView IPL, we have already seen nearly 25% higher engagement for users who watch the live stream in MaxView. Some say they can watch while walking, some have seen taxi drivers steal glances at it during traffic lights, and one person actually told me that he can now watch the match in office without anyone knowing. They think it’s a normal activity on the phone,” Gupta said.
What started as a mobile-specific UI design is now emerging as the most frictionless, all-in-one viewing experience — making the most of the 6-inch screen. “So, what’s started as an endeavour to make viewing of the mobile more intuitive and designed for a 6-inch mobile screen,” Gupta said, “is today turning into the most immersive experience that we can offer. It’s seamless, it’s frictionless, it allows you to watch the live game and it allows you to watch anything around the live game without ever leaving the live game.”
Gupta captured the essence of the product with a simple but powerful reframing of the mobile experience. “As the screen is getting smaller, the experience is getting bigger,” he said, adding, “The screen is mobile or mini, but the experience is mega. And that’s what MaxView 2.0 is all about. It’s about delivering a mega experience on a mini screen.”
Gupta explained that the product was designed to reflect not just technology trends, but actual fan behavior — and to scale for personalized delivery across devices and contexts. “And that’s what we believe the future of consumer experiences on the platform looks like — designed for device type, designed for consumer cohorts, highly designed for one fan as many and not many fans as one as to be able to broadcast the game. One fan in different points of time, one fan on different devices, one fan in different environments, wants to experience the game and that’s what our mission is,” he said, adding, “Ideally, if technology allows and our capacity allows, we would like to serve one fan as many.”
Gupta ended with a clear call to rethink audience engagement — not by targeting masses, but by designing for one unique fan at a time. He expressed his one underlying message on the topic as: “Do not think of fans as one homogenous set of audiences that are engaging, but to see all of them as individuals who have very different consumer preferences and differentiated consumer preferences at different points of time. So, let’s hope for the market of one, and let’s hope for one fan at a time.”
