Viacom18 ropes in Anil Jayaraj to spearhead sports business

After acquiring media rights of a clutch of popular sporting rights, Viacom18, billionaire Mukesh Ambani-controlled entertainment network, is now gearing up to mark its entry in the sports broadcast.

And to head the sports business as its chief executive, Viacom18 has hired Anil Jayaraj, head of sales at Star Sports.

Highly placed sources in Viacom18 confirmed to ET that Jayaraj will be joining the company next week.


“Viacom18 has just started building a strong sports portfolio and Anil will be joining us as CEO – Sports business,” the source confirmed.

ET first reported on August 20th that Ambani is putting in place what industry watchers call will be “India’s most formidable sports play”.

It is learned that the company has acquired rights of the next FIFA World Cup 2022 – scheduled to be played in Qatar in the end of next year – for a whopping $55 million.

Earlier, the broadcaster had picked up media rights – broadcast and digital - for Italy’s popular football league Serie A, Spanish football league La Liga, French football league the League 1, ATP Masters (tennis) and Abu Dhabi T10 (cricket).

Viacom18, the joint venture between Ambani’s TV18 and US entertainment conglomerate ViacomCBS, has a clutch of entertainment channels in Hindi, English and regional languages, as well as a content studio and a video streaming service, Voot.

Sports industry experts find the timing of Jayaraj’s hiring perfect, as many sports rights will be coming up for auction or negotiations starting with the ICC rights (2024-2031) in November- December, the Indian Premier League (2023-2027) and the BCCI rights for the next cycle.

Email query sent to Viacom18 didn't elicit any response.