Prashant Khanna, Head – Sports & Live Experiences at JioStar with Adam Crosthwaite at Australia Sports Innovation Week

This month at the MCG, we had the good fortune of being able to interview Prashant Khanna, Head - Sports & Live Experiences at JioStar during Australia Sports Innovation Week delivered by STWS.

JioStar is the unified entity formed by the merger of the television (Star Sports) and digital streaming (JioHotstar, which combined JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar) platforms.

For the IPL 2025 season, the audience reach for the cricket broadcast was massive.

🏏 Overall JioStar (TV and Digital) Audience

• Total Viewers (Reach): 1 Billion viewers across both linear television and digital platforms.

• Cumulative Watch-Time: Over 840 billion minutes, the highest for any IPL season.

📱 Digital Platform Audience (JioHotstar)

The digital numbers show significant growth:

• Total Views: Over 23.1 billion views for the entire season, 

• Watch-Time: 384.6 billion minutes of watch-time.

🏆 Final Match Records (JioHotstar Digital)

The final match set all-time digital records:

• Peak Concurrent Viewers: 55 million viewers simultaneously.

• Video Views for the Match: 892 million 

• Watch-Time for the Match: 16.74 billion minutes

Q: How is India’s approach to sports broadcasting technology different from traditional markets?

A: Because we reach such a massive audience in the country, our intention has always been to adopt a fan-first approach. Traditional models are typically built by developing first and then going to the consumer. In our case, we consistently listen to our viewers, understand their feedback, and then build tools, platforms, and innovations that allow us to reach them in the way they prefer. That’s the fundamental difference — we don’t adopt technology simply because it exists, but because it either enhances our workflow or creates a significant impact from a consumer perspective.

Q: What innovations happening at JioStar should the rest of the world be paying attention to?

A: Through Star Lab and our associations with SVG and other platforms, we engage with thought leaders, networks, and broadcasters across multiple markets. Globally, everyone in sports is largely trying to solve the same set of challenges — but often in silos.

In these fragmented times, where viewer attention is limited, the real question is: how do we capture that attention? How do we segment for different viewing cohorts — younger audiences, female audiences, core fans, or casual viewers? We’re addressing that with a truly consumer-first mindset. We broadcast our key marquee productions in more than 12 languages. Given India’s diversity, we’ve developed vertical production for cricket — the first of its kind — offering a complementary viewing experience rather than a replacement.

We’ve been running remote productions for the last seven to eight years across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US, the West Indies, and India. These are innovations we can both share and learn from globally. As custodians of large-scale sports businesses that reach millions of fans, we believe it’s vital to collaborate — to understand what might be a challenge or opportunity in one market versus another — and to find ways to solve them together.

Q: How did you originally get involved with Australia Sports Innovation Week, and what does coming all the way from India to Australia to deliver your keynote mean to you?

A: STWS is a fantastic platform. We had the opportunity to partner with them through Star Lab, our internal incubation and innovation hub for sports. Our goal is to constantly seek collaborations and partnerships that enable us to explore beyond boundaries and evaluate solutions to common challenges.

We’re always eager to connect with thought leaders, partners, and companies — both large and emerging — who are doing exceptional work around the world. STWS has been an ideal partner for discovering scalable innovations, and we’ve maintained a strategic partnership with them for the last two to three years.

Australia presents an exciting opportunity. As the unilateral broadcaster in India for Cricket Australia, we’ll soon have the Indian team travelling there for a white-ball series. As Indian broadcasters and production partners with CA and Fox, attending STWS in person felt like the perfect opportunity to deepen that engagement.

Australia is extremely advanced and progressive when it comes to sports technology, infrastructure, and viewership. The sporting culture there is phenomenal, so it’s only fitting that we show up in person and immerse ourselves in that environment.

Q: Looking at where sports broadcasting and technology are heading globally, what’s the one systematic change you’d love to see across the industry?

A: The one change we’d like to see is the industry embracing constant change as the norm. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, and complacency is not an option in the business we’re in.

We’re witnessing rapid disruption across media, entertainment, and sports — whether in viewing experiences, production methods, or the democratization of content.

Today, even mobile phones and iPhones are being integrated into professional production workflows. Content creation and movement have become truly democratized.

The key shift we hope for is that change should not be seen as a periodic exercise — it should be continuous. That mindset allows us to remain agile and adaptable, while fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing that drive collective progress.