Speakers

Sanjog Gupta leads the Sports business for Star and Disney India which includes a portfolio of 17 channels. In this role, he is responsible for the business, product (programming & production), marketing, and strategy for the Sports network.

Sanjog has been pivotal in driving the Sports broadcasting space in India. Prior to his current role, he was the content head for sports where he shaped and delivered marquee national and international broadcasts watched in over 200 countries ranging from IPL to ICC Cricket World Cup. Sanjog also played a significant role in driving growth for home-grown Indian sports properties such as Pro Kabaddi League and Indian Super League. He pioneered the regionalization of sports broadcasts by delivering live feeds in seven languages and launching regional sports networks in Hindi-speaking markets, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka & Tamil Nadu. He has championed grassroots development in sports by launching properties such as KBD Juniors and partnering with the Sports & Youth Affairs Ministry to launch Khelo India, which seeks to drive youth participation in Sports. The delivery of interactive consumer experiences and deployment of live AR/VR on broadcast – both world firsts – along with the use of state-of-the-art production technology have been crucial milestones in his vision of putting Star Sports at the forefront of the global broadcasting space.

Having been with Star India for 10 years, Sanjog also led content development for Life OK – Star India’s GEC channel for two years, prior to his role in Sports. He has been in the broadcast industry for almost two decades and has donned content leadership roles across English & Hindi News, Hindi General Entertainment, and Sports.

He is also the Chairperson of the Sports & Youth Affairs Committee at FICCI. In this capacity, he has been influential in bringing the focus of corporate India to sports development and holistically driving a strong multi-sport ecosystem in the country.

Sanjog is a Graduate in Economics (Honours) from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi.

In 2019 Arsenal FC graduate Nico Yennaris officially changed his nationality from British to Chinese, his name to Li Ke and his Club to Beijing Guoan FC. This move made him the first naturalised player to ever play and score in the Chinese Super League and the first player to represent China. Off the pitch he was 2019 China GQ New Athlete of the Year, Forbes 30under30 & Weibo Newcomer of the Year.

Kim joined the Foxtel Group in 2019 after spending two seasons at Cricket Australia as Head of Big Bash Leagues (BBL), which included delivering the first ever standalone Women’s BBL final with a sold-out crowd. Prior to this, she spent 15 years with PepsiCo, most recently as Head of Sports Marketing based at their global HQ in New York, leading initiatives such as the Pepsi Superbowl Halftime Show. Kim was appointed Marketing Director of Kayo Sports in October 2020, leading brand management and go to market strategy for Australia’s leading sports streaming business.

Before becoming IPC President in September 2017, Andrew served the IPC in multiple roles, including Vice President (2013-2017), Governing Member (2009-2013), as well as Chairperson of the IPC Paralympic Games Committee from 2009-2013. Additionally, he was the President of the Americas Paralympic Committee from 2005-2009 after serving as its Secretary General from 2002-2005.

Ajit Mohan, Vice President & Managing Director, Facebook India

As the Vice President and Managing Director, India at Facebook, Ajit Mohan spearheads the company’s India charter. Ajit and his leadership team are focused on the company’s efforts to enable Indians to connect with people, communities, and the things they care the most about.

Prior to Facebook, Ajit was the Chief Executive Officer at Hotstar. He launched and built Hotstar into India’s leading premium video streaming platform. Ajit spent five years at McKinsey & Company, first in New York in its media practice, where he worked with media companies in North America, Europe, and Latin America, and two years as a Fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute, where he co-authored India’s Urban Awakening, a 2010 report that outlined a new policy approach to India’s rapid urbanization.

Ajit has worked extensively in the social sector including initiatives in child nutrition in Bihar, anti-sex selection programs in New Delhi, public school reforms in Cincinnati in the United States, and in improving access to government welfare in New York for a program run by the Robin Hood Foundation.

He is a graduate of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a BASc in Computer Engineering from NTU in Singapore.

Kimberly Koh is the Senior Partnerships Director at World Table Tennis (WTT) and is responsible for securing and managing brand partnerships globally. This includes establishing WTT’s commercial brand partnership structure, and delivering a data and result-driven activation strategy for brands across all of WTT’s event and digital platforms.

She has 9 years of experience in the table tennis business within roles spanning media, marketing and sales, and was part of the core International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) team that led to the initial set up of WTT, applying a holistic understanding of the sport to its commercial strategy.

Craig is recognized as one of Australia’s most innovative and forward thinking chief executives. His charismatic and passionate nature, together with his business acumen, has leveraged him to the forefront of sports administration and the leader behind Australia’s largest and most successful international sporting event.

Craig has been Tournament Director of the Australian Open since 2006 and was appointed CEO of Tennis Australia in 2013. He also serves as the Chair of the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports (COMPPS). His relationship with the playing group and relentless focus on improvement has transformed the Australian Open into one of the players’ and Australia’s favorite events.

The Australian Open has continually broken attendance records since 2006 and attracted more than 814,000 people from around Melbourne, Victoria and across the globe in 2020 alone. The event delivers more than $377 million in economic benefit to the state each year and reaches a global audience of more than 900 million households.

Craig has led the introduction of successful initiatives to shift the trending decline in participation with products such as Hot Shots, adult social play, the rollout of digital platforms to increase court accessibility and affiliation reform. Also, under his leadership, Australia’s different coaching groups were unified into a single organisation and an additional $300 million leveraged for local facilities.

Prior to joining Tennis Australia, Craig was Director of Tennis at the University of Illinois, where he led the fastest tennis program turnaround in US collegiate history, breaking a 100 year-old record for most consecutive wins.

He twice earned the US National Coach of the Year award, coached several top ten professional players and captained the South African Davis Cup team. His achievements have further been recognized by being elected to the College Tennis Hall of Fame (2010) and Illinois Athletic Hall of Fame (2017).

Sunita Kaur is the Senior Vice President of APAC at Twitch. The first in the role, Sunita oversees all operations for content creators, media partners, agencies, advertisers, publishers, and developers in the region. Sunita comes to Twitch from Spotify where she was Managing Director of Southeast Asia and then VP Revenue in APAC over a six year period, expanding the service across Asia and leading launches in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Previously, Sunita held executive roles across Asia at Facebook, Microsoft, and Forbes.

Donn Davis is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Professional Fighters League, the No. 2 MMA company in the world. He assembled the PFL ownership group, led the acquisition of World Series of Fighting, and is the visionary of the PFL. His career has centered on building innovative digital media companies. He co-founded the venture capital firm Revolution, LLC with Steve Case and is a Managing Partner of Revolution Growth. Prior to Revolution, Donn served as Chairman/CEO of Exclusive Resorts, President/COO of the AOL Interactive Properties Group, and Founder/President of Tribune Ventures. Donn started his career at Sidley & Austin and was Chief Counsel for the Chicago Cubs. Donn is a graduate of Miami University (Ohio) and University of Michigan Law School.

Anurag Dahiya is Chief Commercial Officer at Cricket’s global governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC). In his role, Anurag leads ICC’s commercial strategy, and delivery of all commercial elements around global cricket. His team based in Dubai delivers a large number of global and regional cricket events throughout the world, besides managing commercial and media rights partnerships and broadcast production activities around all ICC events. Anurag has deep multi-national experience in media, in the areas of video content strategy and content operations with various organisations. Prior to ICC, he has worked at Singtel, Asia’s leading communications group, and was with Fox International (previously ESPN STAR Sports) for 15 years. His content experience spans launching sports news and cricket channels to Mandarin general entertainment. Anurag earned BE in Computer Science & Engineering from PEC and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.

Michael joined the ELEVEN Group in 2020 to lead ELEVEN’s Taiwan operations.

Before that Michael was Chairman and CEO of SlamBall Asia, where he was responsible for driving the growth of the challenger sport across Asia.

Over his thirty-year career, Michael has held senior roles in sports, media, finance and technology with China Trust Group, IMG, 11 Group, Lissajous Ventures and others. He has experience working in Taiwan, mainland China and Europe.

Michael is an Ajax supporter.

Zohar Ravid is General Manager for international business at Fanatics, the global leader in licensed sports merchandise. He is responsible for developing the strategic vision and identifying opportunities to grow Fanatics’ international business throughout the world. In the last 12 months, he has overseen the formation and launch of Fanatics China, a new Joint Venture with Hillhouse Capital Group, secured one of the biggest sports merchandise partnerships in history, a global ten-year deal with Paris Saint-Germain, and helped unlock licensed product distribution in Australia through a game changing deal with Rebel Sports. Prior to Fanatics, Zohar spent over a decade in investment banking and private equity. Fanatics partners with more than 300 of the biggest sporting teams and organisations in the world including the NFL, NBA, Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Chelsea.

Mirwan has over 20 years experience in sports, advertising and creative industry. He recently joined Indonesia’s Djarum Group to represent their interest in IP development , investment and distribution including Indonesia based OTT platform Mola , Italy’s Como TV, production and investment company SENT Entertainment and Como 1907 football club.

Reed began his tech career in the special effects industry, but then the first Internet bubble divereted his attention to streaming media and development.  He has worked in technology for over 20 years. His experience spans start-ups to global companies like True, Qwest, KPN, PCCW, LVMH, IMG, and Intuit.

Danny Townsend was one of the co-founders of sports and entertainment intelligence and measurement agency, Repucom International which was acquired by global research and data company, Nielsen Holdings in 2016. During his time at Repucom and more recently as Global Managing Director of Nielsen Sport, Danny has advised major brands and sporting bodies such as PepsiCo, Emirates Airline, Mastercard, Redbull, the NBA, the NFL, English Premier League and many professional sports franchises on how to maximise returns on sports marketing initiatives. In 2017, Danny returned to Australia to take up the role of Chief Executive Officer at Sydney FC where he has overseen significant growth in the Club’s corporate partnership base and the evolution of a number of strategic projects. More recently, as a result of the Australian Professional (Football) Leagues unbundling from Football Australia, Danny was appointed as Managing Director of the newly formed entity tasked with delivering a broadcast deal and digital first strategy which revitalises the A-League and W-League.

Julian Dunne – Head of Marketing & Content – AFL

ulian has spent the last decade in senior sports marketing roles. He currently heads up marketing and content at the AFL and was previously head of marketing at Cricket Australia. Prior to that he ran sponsorship at the Gemba group, after starting his career in marketing at General Motors Holden.

He has lead some of Australia’s more innovative sports marketing launches and branding projects. This includes the marketing and brand strategy behind the Big Bash League and eight new BBL sporting teams, the new AFL brand positioning and introduction of the AFL’s fan agenda, Sunday Funday and Super Round programs and the highly successful Toyota AFL sponsorship.

He has lead some of the country’s most creative, award winning, marketing strategies, including bringing back the “I’d like to see that” AFL campaign and the new AFL “Don’t believe in never campaign”. Focused on business outcomes, they have won effectiveness and creative awards. This includes a best practice digital case study utilized by Facebook globally.

In his time at Cricket Australia and the AFL he has contributed to driving significant growth, including all time attendances records, revenue growth and large shifts in brand and reputation metrics. He is passionate about building new products, great brands, storytelling and brilliant content, leading teams and working with smart, committed people.

He has an MBA from the University of NSW and studied Entertainment, Media and Sport at Harvard Business School. He has held a board position at Maccabi Australia.

Clive Dickens joined Optus as VP, Television, Content and Product Development in May2019. Clive is responsible for product development, lifting Optus’ digital capability and importantly leveraging Optus’ important exclusive content assets, content and OTT partnerships, including Optus Sport, Apple Music and Fetch TV.

Clive was most recently Chief Digital Officer at Seven West Media. He is an experienced digital leader with extensive worldwide media content relationships formed over the last many decades. He has delivered innovation and hyper growth in numerous start-ups and mature businesses and driven shifts in consumer behaviour through technology, including advising the founders of Shazam (now acquired by Apple). Other previous Non-Executive roles include Yahoo7 and Air Tasker and previous corporate executive roles include Southern Cross Austereo and Absolute Radio.

Clive is currently Non-Executive Director and Co-Founder of Oxis Media, which invests in, operates and provides consultancy services to media organisations and digital/mobile products in the UK.

For the last 16 years Paula has called Channel(V), Star Sports/Espn and Fox her home.

From Veejaying and covering music and movies, to onsite reporting for Grandslams and The Olympics, her mainstay is Formula 1,of which this year will mark her 15th season.

A well known regional media personality who has been in the industry for 25 years juggles her time between being a mother, anchoring TV shows, Voice overs and emcee events.

Greg has over 20 years experience in China’s sports and live event industry. His areas of expertise include venue and event management, commercial & marketing strategy, government relations and During his time in China, Greg has led a team on re-opening Shanghai’s historically preserved Jiangwan Sports Center, worked with China’s first ever Winter Olympic Gold Medalist Yang Yang on developing grass roots ice sports, established various various international IP sports events and properties. Most recently, he worked for the Li Ka Shing Foundation in opening and operating the STU Sports Park and Academic House hotel, executing Mr Li’s personal vision for opening an international standard sports and entertainment venue in his home town of Shantou. Greg is currently working on building bridges between the China and the international sports community, helping build market strategies, engage local partners and align with important government policies.

Caroline Casey is an award-winning social entrepreneur. Committed to building a global movement on inclusive business for the 1.3 billion people in the world with a disability, over the past two decades she has set up several organisations and initiatives centred on disability business inclusion. Caroline is also a TED speaker, Ashoka Fellow, Eisenhower Fellow, a past advisor for the Clinton Global Initiative, a One Young World Counsellor and is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.

Stephen is the Event Strategy Director for World Table Tennis based in Singapore, and is responsible for establishing the WTT event framework and delivering the WTT vision of moving table tennis away from a traditional sports product to an entertainment experience that creates a new era or professional table tennis.

He has more than 15 years of global sports public relations, marketing and event management experience having held roles with the ATP Tour (Senior PR and Marketing Manager), China Open (Senior International Consultant), the largest tennis event in Asia, Taiwan Open (Tournament Director), and prior to joining WTT, he was the Tianjin Open Tournament Director and a member of the WTA Tournament Council.

Jeremy Loeliger is the Commissioner of the National Basketball League, having previously held the offices of Chief Executive Officer and General Manager.

Since his appointment in 2015, Jeremy has overseen the League’s emergence from the brink of bankruptcy to become a flourishing mainstream national sporting league that has captured the attention of basketball fans around the world.

In this period the NBL has undergone a major transformation and is now Australia’s fastest growing sporting league and the second best domestic basketball league in the world after the NBA.

In his role, Loeliger has overseen the successful Next Stars program offering an alternative pathway for budding NBA superstars such as LaMelo Ball and RJ Hampton. The program has generated worldwide interest and enhanced the NBL’s status as a global entertainment product. He has also played a key role in establishing the NBL’s relationships in the US and China and building the league’s profile both domestically and globally.

Before joining the NBL, Loeliger was a partner of a national law firm, practising corporate and commercial law with a focus on mergers and acquisitions and capital markets. In that time, he also carved out a successful sports law practice. He also sits on the Executive Committee of the Victorian Chapter of the Australia China Business Council and is a champion of Sino-Australian trade and sports diplomacy.

Melissa Soobratty is the Senior Media Director at World Table Tennis (WTT) and oversees all areas related to content to drive forward and further professionalise the organisation’s vastly expanding media operations. This includes overseeing commercial broadcast deals, live production and social and digital media.

She has accrued a wealth of experience in the fields of sports media, OTT, business development, strategy and production over the years both in Europe and Asia. Her previous roles include Vice President, Media at Football Marketing Asia (FMA), Business Development Director, APAC at Endeavor Streaming plus commercial roles at StarHub, Setanta Africa, Fox Sports and BBC Worldwide.

Will Penson is VP, GTM Strategy & Operations at Conviva, the leading provider of solutions for streaming video intelligence and optimization. An 8-year veteran at Conviva, Will has worked with many of the largest publishers in the world, including Disney, Sky, Liberty Global, DAZN, Sling, and Zee, helping them understand the relationship between content proposition, quality of experience, audience engagement & monetization, and the impact on business success. Today he is responsible for strategy and operations for the sales and solutions teams. Prior to joining Conviva, Will held sales, pre-sales, technical account management and product management positions at video systems integrator, KIT digital (now Piksel) and online video platform, Kyte.

With a solid track record of 18 years experience working within the TV & Media Domain, Till understands the needs of different customer groups — from Broadcasters to Operators. He is an expert in implementing business models to improve B2B and B2C customer development to increase customer satisfaction, upselling rates and churn prevention in the TV and in the SaaS industry.

Adam has spent the past 15 years working for some of the most exciting global brands such as PokerStars, Nike & Chelsea Football Club where he has applied his experience building and leading digital-first marketing teams to deliver award-winning campaigns. In his current role at Chelsea, he is responsible for Global Fan Engagement where his focus is on growing and engaging the clubs global fan base, driving a brand-marketing strategy to engage new audiences and implementing fan experiences, including helping to grow the Chelsea FC Women’s brand.