In Dire Straits, Live Current Media Raises $2 Million; No MG for CLT20

Live Current Media, which owns the domain Cricket.com and had won the portal rights for the Indian Premier League, has raised $1.06 million via private placements with CEO Geoffrey Hampson, President and COO Jonathan Ehrlich and Chief Corporate Development Officer Mark Melville. Another tranch of up to $1 million is expected within the next 15 days. The money will be utilised to meet the payout to the Indian Premier League, and for the development of the companys Perfume.com business.

Their 10-Q filing makes for worrying reading: LCM ended Q3 with negative working capital, after having reported seven consecutive quarters with substantial losses. What’s more, they expect to continue to make losses, as they intend to spend money in marketing, and on Global Cricket Venture (GCV) - their JV with Net Link Blue Holdings.

In order to address short term liquidity needs, the company plans to sell six domain names - Brazil.com, Vietnam.com, Indonesia.com, Malaysia.com, GreatBritain.com and Communicate.com, which they expect will get them $6-10 Million…enough money to last them till the end of 2009. LCM has over 800 domains.

Earnings
LCM has also announced earnings results for the Q3, the quarter ending September 30th 2008: They’ve reported revenues of $1.95 million, around $1.93 million of which is from their Perfume.com business. We hadn’t expect much from the Cricket related businesses - the IPL wasn’t operational during the quarter, and Cricket.com and BCCI.tv have only just been launched. BCCI.tv is the site for national Cricket, which hardly generates as much interest as the IPL or international Cricket, so don’t expect much from that site either. 

They incurred a cost of $1.01 million related to the MOU with the BCCI and the IPL, and establishing Global Cricket Venture with NLB. During Q3 these costs totaled $276,485, $678,221 in Q3 and $55,317 in Q1.

More on the Champions League T20 Deal, BCCI Deal, and details of the formation of Global Cricket Ventures

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Live Current Media Negotiates Reduction In BCCI Payouts By $1.25 Million For This Year And Next

Live Current Media (LCM) through its joint venture Global Cricket Ventures, has been able to successfully reduce payouts to the Board for Control for Cricket in India by $1.25 million. LCM had won the portal rights for the IPL website IPLT20.com and BCCIs website BCCI.tv.

According to a release, wherein the company also announced that they’ve has reached an agreement to build, manage and monetize the official website of the Champions League Twenty20 for 10 years, GCV also announced that “during the recent IPL franchisee offsite in Bangkok, the venture negotiated a reduction of its minimum revenue guarantee under the BCCI.tv contract by $1.25 million over the remainder of this year and next.”

Some inputs coming in from this article as well, according to which the earlier deal involved a minimum guarantee of $5 million/year for 10 years from LCM to the BCCI. Revenue up to a level of $5 million each year would go to LCM, and subsequent revenue would be split between LCM and the BCCI. LCM also owns Cricket.com, and revenues from that were to be entirely for them. Read the article for inputs on the story of how the BCCI deal was struck.

At the same time, not all is hunky-dory for LCM: given the financial situation, the company intends to raise $6-10 million over the next 90 days from the sale of six of their domain names - Brazil.com, Vietnam.com, Indonesia.com, Malaysia.com, GreatBritain.com and even Communicate.com (which was LCM’s name earlier).

Related:

– Global Cricket Ventures Moves Fantasy Cricket Game Out Of Facebook, To Cricket.com
– BCCI.tv Launched By Global Cricket Ventures, A Live Current Media - NetlinkBlue JV

Global Cricket Ventures Moves Fantasy Cricket Game Out Of Facebook, To Cricket.com

Global Cricket Ventures (GCV), the joint venture between Live Current Media (LCM) and Netlinkblue, appears to believe that their application will do better out of the Facebook ecosystem,  than within it.

The game, once hosted at http://apps.facebook.com/fantasycricket/ has been moved to www.cricket.com. Cricket.com is among Live Current Media’s portfolio of premium portals, which also includes boxing.com, perfume.com and karate.com (related story here), among others. LCM had bought the cricket fantasy game for $25,000, with an additional performance dependent payout of  $10,000. The game was live during the Indian Premier League, when I first saw it. LCM claims to already have more than 750 registered team entries “in the first 24 hours of operations”, but…aren’t they just teams that have been ported from Facebook? Global Cricket Ventures has also appointed Alex Chamberlen as Chief Revenue Officer, who moves from competitor Cricinfo.com. Chamberlain has the Global Head of Sales for Cricinfo, from Sept. 2004 to Aug 2007, and has 15 y ears of media experience.

(also read: BCCI Gets Restraining Order Against Online Fantasy Cricket League, Rediff; Why Rediff?)

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LCM had bought exclusive portal rights to the Cricket tournament Indian Premier League (IPL), and the rights to manage the portal for the governing body BCCI, for $50 million for 10 years. Promoting Cricket.com was a part of the plan, but that hasn’t been implemented, until now. According to their SEC filing for the last quarter, revenues for the first season were immaterial. This is probably because the deal was announced just a few days before the season began, giving them a couple of days to get the IPLT20 portal up and running. And, signing these deals were expensive:

The Company has incurred substantial costs relating to negotiating and performing under the terms of the MOUs with each of the BCCI and the IPL, and establishing the venture with NLB.  During Q2 of 2008, these costs totaled $678,222 (Q1 of 2008 - $55,317) including, but not limited to, expenditures for business development, travel, consulting, and salaries. Not that the expenses are going to reduce: On or about October 1, 2008, the Company is scheduled to make a payment to the BCCI in the amount of $625,000 and a payment to the IPL in the amount of $375,000, in connection with the Global Cricket Venture.

I wonder if GCV and LCM will survive the IPL.

Related:
- BCCI.tv Launched By Global Cricket Ventures, A Live Current Media - NetlinkBlue JV
- ContentSutra: BCCI Gets Restraining Order Against Online Fantasy Cricket League, Rediff; Why Rediff?
- Nimbus Looking To Raise $140 Million: Report; Nimbus Mobile?
- Sports: ESS Pays $975 M For 10-Yr Champions League T20 Rights; ICL - $110 Spend, Games2Win Tie-UP