Mumbai: Viacom18 on Thursday announced the appointment of Anil Jayaraj as CEO – sports. He will be leading the media company’s foray into acquisition, broadcasting, and monetisation of sports properties. 

In his most recent role, Jayaraj was with Star Sports as executive vice president responsible for ad sales, global syndication and cross-screen offer design and measurement. He led his team to deliver business performance across multiple sporting events including Indian Premier League, Cricket World Cup, Pro Kabaddi League, and Indian Super League.

Previously, he worked at Pidilite Industries as chief marketing officer. Prior to that, he was at BP/Castrol for 16 years in sales and marketing roles based in the UK and India. Jayaraj has been a passionate follower of sports since childhood. He works as a mentor with various start-ups during his free time and conducts sessions/guest lectures on business and marketing at various B-Schools.

Welcoming Jayaraj on board, Network18 chairman Adil Zainulbhai said, “As a leading media and entertainment network in India, Viacom18 has been dialing up its offerings to tap into whitespaces across platforms. We believe that sports is an important category in our promise to deliver wholesome entertainment to our over 800 million viewers across demographics and geographies. With his rich experience in identifying and building sporting events into high-value sportainment phenomena, Anil is aptly poised to lead our newest sports vertical.”  

“Sporting events in India have evolved beyond just one or two games with increasing fandom amongst audiences towards newer competitive sports. This democratisation has created an unmatched opportunity for sportainment and I am excited to build Viacom18 network’s foray into sports as a category,” stated Jayaraj.