#OAC 2026: ‘When the medium becomes a movement, it stops being just media’ – Alok Chitre of Rajasthan Royals

“We play 14 games a year and live in culture all 365 days. A brand is built in that gap, on three foundations: ​ cricket, culture and community,” said Alok Chitre, Chief Operating Officer of Rajasthan Royals, speaking on the theme, ‘Cricket, Culture & Commerce: Building a Brand Beyond the Boundary’ as part of the valedictory session at OAC 2026, held at the Grand Hyatt, Goa.  

Alok made a compelling case for treating cricket franchise less like a team and more like a living, throbbing year-round brand entity, with out-of-home advertising as its backbone. 

Alok opened with numbers to make his point. Cricket now makes up 89% of India’s sports economy, up from 85% the year before, and takes 95% of every rupee spent on sports media. India’s sports economy crossed $2 billion for the first  

Having established cricket’s dominance in the country’s economy, he went on talk about the marketing media mix.   “Print has shrunk, TV is fragmenting, and radio has gone niche. But OOH cannot be skipped, blocked or scrolled past. It is the last truly unavoidable medium.”  

He added, “Digital cannot be outgrown. It is the fan’s second screen and second life. IPL 2026 pulled in a combined 1.2 billion viewers across TV and digital, the most-watched T20 season ever, with 700 million from digital alone.” 

When a brand is built at the intersection of the 3C’s 

He laid out the real foundation of a franchise brand – cricket, culture, and community. Cricket brings credibility and reach, culture brings relevance and identity, while community brings permanence.  

He then shared the several ways in which the Royals had inducted fans into the brand building process. Initiatives like The Girls Cup give young women a stage to get scouted, while SupeRR SelectoRR lets fans pitch auction strategy, and Red Bull Speedster hunts nationwide for India’s fastest young bowlers. That last one produced the talk’s standout story: Ashok Sharma, a bowler from near Jaipur who’d nearly quit cricket in 2021, found Speedster on social media, talked his way into a late trial, and made the final five from roughly 250 bowlers. Royals scouts signed him for IPL 2025. The message is clear: brands, personas and stories are born when sport meets culture and community.  

A big part of Chitre’s talk focused on how the Royals treat moving vehicles as advertising canvases. The Royals Chariot, a branded vehicle, announces the team’s arrival in a city before a ball is bowled; Pink Cabs turn taxis into rolling billboards; and the Royals Fan Express saw fans drive a pink convoy from Jaipur to Ahmedabad, turning supporters into the medium itself. One activation took over an airport arrivals hall, with the team walking out under giant images of their own faces before a single bag hit the belt. 

Further, succinctly describing the role of OOH, Alok said, “City OOH announces arrival. While stadium OOH is where that arrival ‘performs,’ in front of the year’s biggest live and broadcast audience.”  

Furthermore, Generative AI, Chitre said, is finally closing a long-standing OOH gap, which is slow to produce, fast to consume. “One campaign idea can now be adapted for every city, in that city’s language, without a separate production run each time. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is the proof. Gen AI lets his story travel to every city, in every language and format, the moment it happens.” ​ 

He closed with a new concept, Halla Bol Nights – the difference between renting a wall for a week and building something a city wants to stand inside. He likened it to ‘bhajan clubbing,’ an old chant restaged with club production. Alok ended the session, and the conference, with a message for the industry. “When the medium becomes a movement, it stops being just media. It becomes culture. For OOH, the opportunity is to build the culture where the community congregates and goes from being unskippable to unforgettable​.”