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ACG Sports Appoints Jake Lush McCrum CEO for India Basketball League

Ad Tribe! Bureau2 min read
ACG Sports Appoints Jake Lush McCrum CEO for India Basketball League

ACG Sports has appointed Jake Lush McCrum as Chief Executive Officer, tasking the former Rajasthan Royals CEO with the commercial build-out and launch of the India Basketball League (IBL), a new sports-entertainment property scheduled to launch in early 2027.

Jake Lush McCrum's Eight Years at an IPL Franchise

McCrum spent eight years at the helm of Rajasthan Royals, where he grew the franchise's fan community, scaled its digital engagement, and expanded the social impact work of the Royals' Foundation across Rajasthan. At ACG Sports, based in Mumbai, he will oversee strategic direction as the league combines professional basketball with live entertainment and fan-focused experiences, a format increasingly common as new Indian sports leagues chase the IPL's entertainment-first template rather than a purely sporting one.

"His combination of global experience with deep immersion in India fits perfectly with what we are trying to achieve with the IBL," said Karan Singh, Owner and Managing Director of ACG Sports.

Betting on a New Property

Launching a new league is a different challenge to running an established one, and ACG Sports is explicitly leaning on McCrum's franchise-management track record to get the IBL off the ground as what it hopes will become "a premier global sporting property." Basketball has struggled for sustained commercial traction in India before, which makes the calibre of the launch team, and the sponsorship and broadcast deals it can attract early, unusually consequential for whether the league survives past its debut season.

India already has federation-backed basketball structures, but none with the scale of production, sponsorship and media-rights ambition the IBL is aiming for, and ACG Sports is effectively betting that the same made-for-television playbook that turned kabaddi into a mainstream property can work for a sport with a smaller existing domestic fan base. McCrum's mandate will include convincing broadcasters and sponsors to back a league with no track record yet, arguably a harder sell than the one he faced walking into an established IPL franchise.

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