Comments on: ESPN Acquires CricInfo

By: Complete List of 2007 Web / Technology Acquisitions » The StartUp Blog at PartnerUp

Wed, 21 May 2008 15:20:35 +0000

[...] Cricinfo is a leading cricket (the sport) portal. Press Release | TechCrunch [...]

By: Live Current Media Signs a $50 Million Deal For Exclusive Online Rights To Indian Cricket

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:49:25 +0000

[...] But did Current Live Media pay too much for the rights? Taggar argues not: Recently the Cricinfo.com site was sold to ESPN for over $50 million and while the site had good traffic, it did not have exclusive content rights [...]

By: Barbarians got past the gate (and onto the wicket) « The thing about useful stuff is

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:24:00 +0000

[...] the news that ESPN has bought Cricinfo is sad indeed. It perhaps does explain why Andrew Hall, the Product [...]

By: Atul Karmarkar

Atul Karmarkar — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:08:52 +0000

@Nosyjoe, the US$ 1 billion you are referring to is the amount ESPN Star Sports paid to acquire the rights to telecast matches organized by the ICC for 8 yrs, fm 2007 onwards.

By: Dave Liverman

Dave Liverman — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:52:47 +0000

CricInfo started life as an IRC bot in 1993, then moved to gopher. I actually helped design the first web home page which went live in 1995. Always worth remembering that there were ways of distributing information prior to the World Wide Web. The site was started by cricket enthusiasts and was almost entirely volunteer run for a number of years, with employees being hired in the late 90s, and then migrating to a mostly professional company in around 2000. It was indeed http://www.cricket.org for a long time, but it’s first home on the web was at OGI – gopher://cricinfo.cse.ogi.edu:7070, then http://cricinfo.cse.ogi.edu

By: tekwek

tekwek — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:46:44 +0000

@dempsey dude that doesn’t even rhyme right…..don’t know what kind of desi friends you have that never told you this…..but kumble is not pronounced as tumble….its more like koomb Lay…..:-)

its interesting that they acquired cricinfo.com even though espnstar.com had a pretty big footprint in the cricket world…..

@Saagar…..its not Mike, its Duncan and he did say former British empire….which includes all the countries you mentioned

By: Vasudev Killada...(Vasu)

Vasudev Killada...(Vasu) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:15:14 +0000

The King of Sports Channel made a lot of difference into the gaming cricket in telecasting and picture qualities. Now with this Acquisition, we expect more features in viewing cricket from this website….

Good luck,
Vasu

By: tim

tim — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:40:52 +0000

let’s hope it doesn’t go the same way as soccernet.

By: Rajan Tawate

Rajan Tawate — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:08:08 +0000

Just to let everybody know:
1) Cricket is the most popular game in India
2) Cricket Starts are like Demi-Gods in India
3) There are two flavours of Cricket Matches very popular:
a) One Day Match
b) Test Match ( Goes for 5 days or at times 3 Days)
4) When there are International Cricket Matches like India/England or India Pakistan, the entire country comes to a stand-still

By: Saagar

Saagar — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:26:40 +0000

And I need to correct you on one fact Mike, it's not just England (British empire as you mentioned) that is fanatic about cricket. Cricket is like a religion in Indian Subcontinent (India, Pakistan and Srilanka). And significant amount of revenue comes from there for ICC or other telecasters. Check this post to get an idea of how passionate people in India are about cricket..

By: Saagar

Saagar — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:22:51 +0000

I guess, ESPN acquiring cricinfo might have its own set of problems. If ESPN does not hold telecast rights for a series, and if Setmax or someone else holds those rights, I doubt if it would cause a legal battle for cricinfo to live blog those scores. Does that mean that there will not be coverage for all the matches in cricinfo from now on?

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:06:14 +0000

Sorry cricket fans your isp does not subscribe to ESPN premium services. You will no longer be able to view the site.

By: Concrete Stain

Concrete Stain — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:52:19 +0000

Looks like ESPN is expanding their portfolio

By: flip

flip — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:17:33 +0000

@ NosyJoe – that’s way too much. You must have seen the report about the $1 billion plus that ESPN-Star Sports paid for the ICC Global Rights for 8 years and mixed up figures.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:00:48 +0000

ESPN recently acquired Jasyki.com, unknown how much they paid though…

By: techmine

techmine — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:43:19 +0000

This was a great news yesterday. Its good to see techcrunch reporting on it. I know a lot of people who have set this site (religiously) as their home page. There could be millions of them. The site has a huge huge database of players and their records. Somebody rightly said – Its a bible of cricket. Although it has to do with other bible of cricket- Wisden (which bought circinfo few years back). ESPN as a sports powerhouse can do wonders to cricinfo. But just maintain the look and feel. Its amazingly simple.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:47:32 +0000

One of the most exciting news from yesterday. I remember in 1996 – 1997 there was an india – pakistan match in canada and cricket.org could not manage their servers effectively. Since then they had been growing leaps and bounds with fanbase.
With the ESPN Acquisition, I hope cricinfo will still maintain the simplicity and get more features. I am hoping for espn’s on demand feature to come into cricinfo.

By: NosyJoe

NosyJoe — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:18:16 +0000

the deal appears to be in the $US1 billion range…

By: Coleman Hines

Coleman Hines — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:40:17 +0000

Simon, I take it you’ve never been to India…

By: Shrisha

Shrisha — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:39:47 +0000

A billion fans is close to the mark . Every animate thing (and some inanimate artifacts as well) in the Indian sub-continent is a committed, crazed, and often emotional cricket fan.

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:27:28 +0000

Billions of fans? Tens of millions maybe…

By: TECHFLOCK

TECHFLOCK — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:28:05 +0000

@ Andrew – they did get cricket.org

I believe it started out as a community and ended up what it is now. Its the best site out there both in terms of information and quality. They track probably each and every player ever played – Amazing. Hope ESPN injects some more cash to carry Cricinfo to the next level

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:08:37 +0000

what surprises me is the domain name, you would think back then they would have been able to get http://www.cricket.com

By: Dempsey

Dempsey — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:05:27 +0000

Just wanted to add:

Long live Anil Kumble
He makes wickets tumble

(rhyming joke for my desi friends)

By: Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 05:55:09 +0000

Zaid
fixed, held in moderation due to the number of links.