Associate Director – Category Marketing, Sports

Job description

We are looking for a marketer with a genuine passion for sports beyond cricket: someone who understands how to build fandom around emerging and under-penetrated properties. As the marketing champion for JioStar’s emerging sports portfolio - including Kabaddi, Wimbledon, WPL, Esports, and other strategic non-cricket properties. You will be responsible for driving audience growth, building cultural relevance, and turning niche interest into sustained viewing habits. This role is ideal for someone who combines fan empathy, challenger-brand thinking, and strong execution capability to build momentum for both marquee international properties and fast-growing domestic sports. What you will do: Own end-to-end audience growth for JioStar’s emerging sports portfolio, driving awareness, trials, repeat viewership, and stronger top-of-mind recall across seasons. Develop differentiated growth strategies for each property based on its audience opportunity, market maturity, and fandom potential. For example, driving mainstream aspiration for Kabaddi, sustaining women’s sports fandom for WPL, building premium occasioning for Wimbledon, and creating youth-native momentum for Esports. Identify core audience segments, understand fan motivations, and uncover the emotional, cultural, and behavioral triggers that drive discovery, engagement, and repeat consumption. Build property-specific consumer narratives by leveraging rivalries, athlete personalities, cultural moments, youth trends, regional relevance, and social conversations to deepen audience affinity. Design and execute audience acquisition initiatives that convert niche interest into sustained fan habit and long-term engagement. Identify high-potential growth pockets and create cost-efficient, high-impact interventions to expand audience reach. Partner across digital, social, influencers, PR, and on-ground communities to build momentum and relevance for emerging sports properties. Continuously experiment with new fan acquisition approaches, measure performance, and optimize interventions to improve growth outcomes. Collaborate with Programming, Research, Social, PR, Partnerships, Acquisition, Product, Distribution, and Commercial teams to ensure the right visibility, narrative support, and platform prominence for each property. Champion emerging sports properties internally by building alignment and driving long-term focus on audience growth. What we are looking for: 4–6 years of experience in brand marketing, growth marketing, or audience development, preferably in sports, media, entertainment, or consumer internet. Strong understanding of consumer behaviour, audience segmentation, and brand-building fundamentals. Demonstrated ability to create and scale marketing interventions that drive audience growth and engagement. Experience working across cross-functional teams to deliver integrated marketing initiatives. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to identify growth opportunities and translate insights into action. High ownership mindset with the ability to operate effectively in fast-paced, evolving business environments. Passion for sports (especially Cricket), and a strong interest in building fandom for emerging properties.