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

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:22:30 +0000

Hi Guys, i feel many peope here are commenting just for the sake of it, without knowing the actual information. Most important thing in the contract is that IPL20 is not allowed to show the matches online, so guys no point in discussing penetaration of broadband etc. Site is developed only for the news and other stats. So just check out your knowledge before commenting!

By: IPL season kicks off with a McCullum’s crackers and new ads : Play Circuit

IPL season kicks off with a McCullum’s crackers and new ads : Play Circuit — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:28:17 +0000

[...] ad of either pesi or coke on tv during the match. No Pepsi no Coke just Thums Up. A blogpost on techcrunch about IPL received raving comments about a firm buying online rights of Indian Premier League. A [...]

By: European

European — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:29:39 +0000

@ Ankur & Kulveer - without knowing your complete game plan, it’s impossible to say whether it’s good or bad, but your bet seems to be on providing content to sportsfans who are a) non-discriminating in terms of their content needs, i.e. not much history of inter-city cricket rivalry in India and happy with TV broadcast itself b) of a higher age range than most who follow sports. I don’t particularly see what you provide that cricinfo or other cricket websites can’t, save for exclusive photos of the games and a slightly more lucrative domain name. It will very interesting to see how your bet plays out.

By: Ankur Nagpal

Ankur Nagpal — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 03:54:23 +0000

lennyr and others, just to clarify - we are not talking about live streaming rights - we are talking about exclusive online representation of the BCCI and the Indian Premier League including a host of exclusive content including access to the top Indian players and rights to all photographs taken at the ground during the IPL.

And while we are leading up to the launch of cricket.com, we have made our Fantasy Cricket Facebook application live at http://apps.facebook.com/fantasycricket/ - a tutorial video can be found at cricket.com

By: lennyr

lennyr — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:10:36 +0000

Cricket is all over SopCast, PPLive, etc. Anybody who has broadband and wants it can get it for free now, and there’s nothing an official licensee can do about it. Wouldn’t put my $50mm on that.

By: Mnsw

Mnsw — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:52:11 +0000

Seems like a good deal to me as the indian following is huge.

By: Matt_

Matt_ — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:35:23 +0000

Ill continue to use MyP2P from my Cricket Needs until they provide ad supported cricket streams on a Worldwide basis .

http://www3.myp2p.eu/

By: Hassan

Hassan — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:24:53 +0000

$50 million for exclusive online rights for 10 years of IPL is a steal guys! These guys can make money just by streaming to USA, Europe(UK, Germany, France) and Australia. Expatriate Indians and other cricket lover around the world will be ready pay to watch online.

As for India, I would agree with others it doesn’t have the broadband penetration to create a significant impact. Maybe the mobile version of the site could be a hit because of the burgeoning mobile user base.

Quite an exciting time for cricket!

By: DesiScreen

DesiScreen — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:18:55 +0000

Goot to see cricket on TC.

I think shelling out $50M for this is a bold move. I am sceptical of its success though.

I don’t think having exclusive rights will gurantee success in media 2.0. Cricinfo has the traffic and is the equivlanet of ESPN.com (actually owned by them) for cricket.

These folks want to be like MLB.com for cricket. It is good that they own cricket.com domain. That is a good asset.

They may have a shot at success if they can offer streaming cricket coverage at reasonable prices. But their user base for such a service would be Indians living outside India. Indians in India can watch cricket on TV and won’t pay for it. Bandiwdth is a problem too.

By: Dilbert

Dilbert — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:01:13 +0000

$50 million for 10 year exclusive is not a steal for broadcasting Indian cricket matches, give me a break.

Indian Premier League won’t make that much in ticket sales in the stadiums, and they will only make a fraction of that income in online subscriptions.

By: Nikc

Nikc — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:47:21 +0000

This IPL is going to be huge all over the cricket loving world, with stars from most countries (except England, the home of 2020 cricket). A lot of that has higher broadband penetration; UK, AUS, NZ etc.

50 MIL is pretty cheap considering the super restrictive attitude of the IPL towards media access; it’s very exclusive rights. In fact cricinfo has totally been denied any access, so i heard.

But if they launch cricket.com in the autumn they will have missed the entire first season.

Go the Super Kings!

By: Indian Premier League - IPL » Live Current Media Signs a $50 Million Deal For Exclusive Online Rights To Indian Cricket

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:23:06 +0000

[...] Original post by TechCrunch [...]

By: Point (Fielder)

Point (Fielder) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:53:22 +0000

@30…

@31 is right!

By: 4th Umpire

4th Umpire — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:49:47 +0000

@Senthil
as far as Indian sub continent is considered it dosent matter .. Cricket is like religon over there !
it would be watched on TV/Web/Groud /Road side/Restaurants etc. with the same entusiasum.

By: Senthil

Senthil — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:12:55 +0000

Hmmm… The NFL and other league formats worked well for TV, NFL innovated itself for american television… and made it a great experience for TV.

What kind of a “game” is IPLT20 ? web or television?

as for me I love football…

By: Mrinal

Mrinal — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:06:41 +0000

Now - that is exciting and I can see myself watching more TV on the laptop since its not here on regular TV!

By: Ro

Ro — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:53:28 +0000

@Harjeet: While the countdown is being fixed on http://iplt20.com/ the DLF IPL logo at the bottom of the page, gives a 404.

By: What’s Moving in CrunchBase Today — 4/17/08 at CrunchBase Blog

What’s Moving in CrunchBase Today — 4/17/08 at CrunchBase Blog — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:51:44 +0000

[...] LiveCurrent Media signs $50 Million for exclusive on-line right to cricket [...]

By: scrapman

scrapman — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:49:38 +0000

Kulveer,Good luck on this new venture I have much riding on your success.I hope that you do better with this than the Brazil.com site which I feel is inferior to other similar sites and doesn’t imove me to visit Brazil.I’m sure it’s a work in progress and hope to see more robust sites from you new guys in the future.Take care…………………….

By: Harjeet

Harjeet — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:31:40 +0000

@Ro: Yes we maintain that site, sorry about the countdown we’re looking into that now

@Abhinav: Yep we built the Fantasy Cricket facebook app as well. let me know if you have any feedback on it.

By: Ghaus

Ghaus — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:29:29 +0000

@ Mike and other commentators

I totally agree with your points, even Pakistanis are crazy to watch Indian Premier League (so add the number of Pakistani users too). But i think this will take off in 2009 or 2010 when Broadband will further penetrate and PCs will become more affordable.

By: TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » 安い？高い？ Live Current Media、インドのクリケット独占配信権を$50Mで確保

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:23:43 +0000

[...] [原文へ] [...]

By: your AANTY

your AANTY — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:21:51 +0000

Holly COW (excuse da pun? :/) $50 for 10 year exclussive? That’s a not a steal that’s a butt fuckin’

By: ANurag

ANurag — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:14:12 +0000

SopCast. …. Watch it for free

By: Ro

Ro — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:00:36 +0000

Do you guys also maintain the official IPL website.
http://iplt20.com/

The Countdown looks totally messed up. Its calculating the time based on MY local time (PST)(most probly picking up the time from my desktop in Seattle).
The event starts on Apr 18th - 20:00 (IST)
Please Fix it.