(by Apurva Chaudhary and Nikhil Pahwa) Star India has launched a new sports website at starsports.com, with live streaming of matches, live commentary in Hindi and English, match fixtures and results, reports Business Standard. According to the report, Star India has invested over Rs 100 crore on the website, which appears to be inordinately high (and probably exaggerated), given that ESPNSTAR.com already had a live streaming setup in place. Surely, its front end interface can't be that expensive. STAR has plans to charge users a fee to access the content, however, it is currently free for a limited period while the website is in Beta. Why Launch StarSports.com? Recently, the ESPN-StartSports, a joint venture between ESPN and Star TV (owned by News corporation) split when Rupert Murdoch owned News Corporation acquired ESPN Star Sports (ESS) by acquiring Disney's 50 percent stake in the joint venture, paying $335 million for the deal. Espnstar.com, previously run by the jonint venture, is now being re-directed to Starsports.comm, so this could be a part of the plan to transition users from the co-branded property to STAR Sports. ESPN currently runs espncricinfo.com, which offers live match scores, news and articles, statistics, fixtures, photos, among others. Will People Pay For Watching Matches On StarSports.com? Sports content is premium: it's immediate, fans are more likely to pay for watching a great game in progress, than go home and watch highlights on TV. There is value in immediacy, which is lost once a game finishes. Willow.tv appears to have made the paid model work, but the question that STAR faces…
