Samarth Chauhan Joins Times Network As DGM Revenue For Sports
Samarth Chauhan has joined Times Network as Deputy General Manager for Revenue within its sports business, PWR India Tours and Private Limited.
- New role: DGM Revenue, sports business, Times Network
- Remit: revenue and commercial development for the southern market, across the network's expanding sports portfolio and emerging properties
- More than 13 years across sports sponsorship, commercial strategy, partnerships and franchise operations in India and the UAE
- Previously: sponsorship manager at DP World ILT20; Chief Commercial Officer at Desert Vipers; General Manager at Bengaluru Bulls
- Also worked with BCCI, GMR Sports and Burman Sports, across cricket, football and kabaddi
Samarth Chauhan Is Hired To Build, Not To Maintain
The line that defines this job is "emerging sports properties". Times Network is not asking someone to renew existing sponsorships on established leagues. It is asking them to find commercial value in properties that are still being assembled.
That is a different skill, and Chauhan's record is unusually well matched to it. Building a franchise from the ground up is exactly what a Chief Commercial Officer at the Desert Vipers in a new UAE T20 league or a General Manager at a Pro Kabaddi side does. Neither of those came with an existing rate card.
Why The South, Specifically
Giving the role a regional remit rather than a national one is the interesting structural choice. Southern India is the country's strongest market for sports outside cricket, with a deep base for kabaddi and football and an advertiser set that will pay for regional relevance rather than national reach.
Chauhan's own framing points there:
"Times Network's entry into sports presents an exciting opportunity to build commercially meaningful properties in a market where the appetite for sport continues to expand beyond the traditional major leagues."
The Honest Read
Beyond the traditional major leagues is where the growth is and also where the money is hardest to raise. Cricket sells itself. Everything else has to be sold on an argument about a specific audience, and that argument has to survive a media buyer comparing it against an IPL rate.
Someone who has done that at a kabaddi franchise and a new-league cricket team has made the pitch before, which is the point of the hire.
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