Star India Walks Away From One of Cricket's Most Valuable Sponsorship Slots
Star India has opted not to renew its jersey sponsorship deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), leaving one of the most commercially potent assets in global sports without a primary on-kit partner. The news, reported this week, marks a decisive break between the broadcaster and on-field Indian cricket branding, even as Star India continues to hold media rights for the sport. According to publicly available records on the India national cricket team's sponsorship history, the BCCI jersey sponsorship sits at the apex of cricket's commercial hierarchy — spanning Tests, ODIs, and T20 Internationals, with individual matches routinely drawing enormous audiences across the subcontinent and diaspora markets.
For anyone in the business of selling or buying sponsorships, this isn't just a roster change on the BCCI's partner deck. It's a signal worth unpacking.
Why This Matters: A Broadcaster Deciding It Doesn't Need the Jersey
The instinct is to read this as bad news for the BCCI. And yes, losing a partner willing to pay at the top of the market is never ideal. But the more interesting question is: why did Star India walk?
Star already owns the broadcast relationship with Indian cricket. The jersey sponsorship gave them additional exposure — logo placement across every format, every venue, every press conference. But a broadcaster sponsoring the jersey of the sport it already televises creates a peculiar loop. You're paying for brand visibility on a broadcast you control. The marginal return on that investment, compared to simply promoting your platform during your own coverage, likely started to look thin.
This suggests a broader rethink about where media companies should spend their sponsorship budgets versus their programming budgets. When you already own the eyeballs through your broadcast deal, do you really need to be on the jersey too?
The exit likely reflects Star India concluding that media rights and jersey sponsorship overlap too much in their strategic value — and that the jersey dollars could be better deployed elsewhere.
For the BCCI, the immediate task is clear: find a replacement partner. But the nature of that replacement will tell us a great deal about the current state of Indian cricket sponsorship economics.
The BCCI's Sponsorship Portfolio Is in a Period of Turnover
Star India's departure doesn't exist in isolation. The BCCI's sponsorship architecture has been undergoing significant restructuring over recent years. The multi-partner model established for the 2019–2023 cycle — which included Dream11, LafargeHolcim, and Hyundai as official partners — represented a deliberate strategy to diversify revenue sources across sectors rather than relying on a single title sponsor.
Title sponsorship itself has shifted hands, with Paytm holding rights through 2024 before Muthoot Fincorp took over. Each transition reflects brands making different calculations about the value proposition of aligning with Indian cricket at various tiers of the partnership hierarchy.
What's notable is the pattern: fintech, construction materials, automotive, fantasy sports. These aren't legacy sponsors in the mold of tobacco or alcohol companies that once dominated cricket hoardings. They're brands chasing scale in India's growing consumer economy. The question now is which category of brand steps into the jersey slot.
A few scenarios seem plausible:
- A consumer tech or e-commerce giant looking for mass-market brand awareness. Think companies that need to reach hundreds of millions of households and view cricket as the single most efficient channel to do so.
- A financial services or insurance brand using the jersey as a credibility play in a market where trust is a major differentiator.
- A global brand using Indian cricket as an entry point into the subcontinent — someone willing to pay a premium because the exposure math works differently for a company that doesn't already have household recognition in India.
Each of these would signal something different about how the market values cricket sponsorship right now.
What Star India's Exit Tells Us About Sponsorship ROI Scrutiny
Let's be direct: this decision almost certainly involved a hard look at return on investment. Star India is a sophisticated media operation. They have access to viewership data, engagement metrics, and attribution tools that most sponsors can only dream of. If they concluded the jersey placement wasn't delivering sufficient incremental value on top of their broadcast relationship, that's a data-driven verdict — not a whim.
This has implications far beyond Indian cricket. Across sports sponsorship, we're watching a shift from "exposure for exposure's sake" toward more rigorous ROI evaluation. Brands are asking harder questions:
- What did this placement actually drive in terms of consideration, conversion, or brand lift?
- Could the same budget achieve more through digital channels, experiential activations, or performance marketing?
- Is logo-on-jersey still the premium it was five years ago, or has audience fragmentation diluted its impact?
The fragmentation point matters enormously. Major cricket matches still command massive live audiences. But consumption patterns are splintering — younger fans watching highlights on social media, second-screen behavior during live broadcasts, time-shifted viewing on OTT platforms. A jersey logo is most valuable during live broadcast, when the camera lingers on players. Its value diminishes in every other consumption context.
This is where rigorous deliverable tracking becomes essential for both sides of the table. Rights holders need to prove that a jersey placement delivers measurable outcomes across formats and media channels — not just cite raw viewership numbers. Platforms like SponsorFlo that enable granular tracking of sponsorship deliverables and ROI analytics are built precisely for this kind of accountability conversation. When a potential replacement partner asks the BCCI to justify the price tag, the board will need data that goes beyond audience reach.
The Negotiation Dynamics for the BCCI's Next Jersey Partner
Here's where things get interesting from a deal structure perspective.
The BCCI is negotiating from strength — Indian cricket remains the most commercially valuable property in the sport globally, and possibly one of the most valuable in all of sports when measured by sheer audience size. But Star India's departure also gives prospective partners a negotiating chip. If a broadcaster that already televises the sport decided the jersey wasn't worth the price, why should another brand pay the same or more?
The BCCI will likely need to do two things:
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Demonstrate differentiated value. The pitch to the next jersey sponsor can't just be "300 million viewers." It needs to articulate what jersey placement specifically delivers that other partnership tiers don't — and back it up with data from previous cycles.
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Potentially restructure the asset. Could the BCCI unbundle the jersey sponsorship by format? Sell T20I jersey rights separately from Test and ODI rights? Format-specific deals could attract different sponsor profiles — a fintech brand might value T20I placement (younger, more engaged audience) far more than Test cricket placement.
Unbundling would be bold, and it carries risks — it complicates the visual identity of the team and could reduce the overall revenue if the pieces sell for less than the whole. But it would also open the door to brands that can't afford a full-format jersey deal but would pay a significant premium for targeted exposure.
For sponsorship professionals managing complex multi-tier partnerships like these, the ability to organize proposals, track different deliverable packages, and manage partner relationships across fragmented deal structures is critical. This is the kind of complexity that sponsorship management platforms are designed to handle — especially when a rights holder is simultaneously courting multiple prospects for different tiers of the same asset.
A Prediction: The Next Jersey Sponsor Won't Be a Media Company
I'll make a specific prediction: the BCCI's next jersey sponsor will come from outside the media and entertainment sector. Star India's exit reflects a lesson that other broadcasters and streaming platforms will absorb — if you own the content, you don't need to sponsor the jersey. The smarter play is investing in content integration, co-branded digital experiences, or platform-exclusive activations.
The jersey will go to a brand that needs what only a jersey can provide: persistent, high-visibility association with Indian cricket across every match, every highlight, every photograph. That points toward consumer goods, financial services, or an ambitious tech company making a mass-market play in India.
Whoever wins the deal will likely demand more sophisticated measurement than previous jersey sponsors received. They'll want to know — with specificity — what the placement drove. And they'll want contractual protections tied to deliverable fulfillment and performance benchmarks.
What to Watch Next
The BCCI's timeline for announcing a replacement will be telling. A quick turnaround suggests strong inbound interest and a healthy market. A prolonged vacancy would indicate that the board is struggling to meet its price expectations — which would have ripple effects across cricket sponsorship globally.
Keep an eye on whether the BCCI adjusts its sponsorship tier structure in response. The exit of a major partner often triggers a broader review of how partnership assets are packaged, priced, and sold. If the board introduces new activation rights, digital-first deliverables, or format-specific sponsorships, it'll signal that Indian cricket is adapting to the same forces reshaping sponsorship across every sport.
For sponsorship teams watching this unfold — whether you're on the brand side evaluating a potential bid or a rights holder learning from the BCCI's situation — the takeaway is clear. The days of selling and buying sponsorships purely on reach are fading. Measurement, accountability, and structured deliverable management are what close deals and retain partners now. Tools like SponsorFlo exist to make that transition manageable, even for properties operating at the scale of international cricket.
The BCCI jersey is back on the market. How it gets sold — and to whom — will tell us more about the state of sports sponsorship in 2026 than almost any other deal this year.
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