Champions League T20 Cancelled; Impact On Live Current Media?

Monetization will be delayed for Global Cricket Ventures: the JV between NASDAQ listed Live Current Media and Net Link Blue holdings has been hit by a rather unfortunate development - the inaugural Champions League T20 2008 has been cancelled, and inaugural tournament will now be played in October 2009. The tournament, which was scheduled to be begin on December 3rd, was indefinitely postponed following the terrorist attacks on Mumbai on the 26th of November 2008. 

Do bear in mind that Global Cricket Ventures had not paid any Minimum Guarantee (MG) to the BCCI or the IPL for the tournament, and the revenue was to be split evenly between GCV and The Champions League. Still, the cancellation of this years event does mean a significant loss of opportunity for GCV…the next opportunity for revenues from the IPL will be during its second season, which is tentatively scheduled to be held from April 10 to May 29, 2009. 

Live Current Media was also expected to receive a tranch of investment by around the first week of December; there’s no update from the company on that yet.

Note: Live Current Media President Jonathan Ehrlich and Chief Revenue Officer Alex Chamberlain were among the survivors from the terrorist attack on the Taj in Mumbai. Read about Ehrlichs escape here or watch the video here. An interview with Chamberlain here. 

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

Indian Media Takes To Twitter

Following the siege in Mumbai which brought the Twitter and its usage by citizens to share and spread information into the limelight, media publications including Mint and DNA have signed up for Twitter. While media publications on Twitter are not new - New York Times, Wired, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal have their own twitter feeds.

What’s interesting is the difference in the approach being adopted by Mint and DNA:

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Cricket Australia Restricts Web Usage Of Content From Aus-NZ Test Series

Another continent, but the same story yet again: Global news agencies including Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Reuters and Getty Images have refused to cover the first Cricket Test Match between Australia and New Zealand, citing a now familiar issue - discrimination over Web coverage, reports the AFP. Cricket Australia has demanded the right to choose which of the agencies’ clients can receive photographs and text coverage of the Test Matches, and which of them cannot. 

The battle is over Intellectual property rights on the Internet, and echoes what happened in India a few months ago, around the Indian Premier League; Cricket Australia has gone a step further, and, according to the New Zealand Press Association, signalled that it wants to charge Media outlets licence fees to supply content from its venues to commercial websites.

On why this is important, and other instances of issues over rights: (more…)

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

BCCI.tv Launched By Global Cricket Ventures, A Live Current Media - NetlinkBlue JV

What is Global Cricket Ventures?
The first public announcement from Global Cricket Ventures gives a hint of the issues around the sale of Cricket rights in India. Global Cricket Ventures is a joint venture between two companies - Live Current Media and NetlinkBlue Holding. The rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) website were sold at the same time - just days before the IPL was formed.

Live Current Media had bagged only the portal rights, and the live streaming rights to the IPL were sold separately - to Willow.tv in the US (acquired by Reliance), NetlinkBlue for India and separately for the UK and the middle east. Global Cricket Ventures (GCV) combines the live streaming rights for India that NetlinkBlue has, with the official portal rights which Live Current Media acquired for 10 years, for $50 million. This partnership has been around for quite a while now, since IPL matches were being streamed at IPLT20.com. Makes you wonder why the rights were sold separately in the first place…

BCCI.tv
GCV has launched BCCI.tv, the official site of the BCCI, which like most other cricket websites, features scorecards, statistics, photos, news updates. There are some rather long video clips available online - for example, 50 minute long highlights from each day of the historic 2001 India-Australia series. The site will feature deferred streaming video, probably from matches to which BCCI has the rights, and mobile content, which doesn’t appear to be live yet. Archival content from the BCCI has also not yet been made available.

Frankly, there’s not much to set the site apart from the rest, except the video content. How many viewers watch reruns of Cricket matches on TV? Live streaming is what works best. BCCI’s website has google ads, and not much else in terms of monetization.

Media Accredition Form
Remember the entire mess regarding media accredition for the IPL? Well a registration form for the Media is available here, and it appears “Internet Web Sites” can register. So not much point in having the “official portal”, if the content is non-exclusive.

Related:
BIG Entertainment Acquires 75% Stake In Willow TV; $60-70 Million Investment; IPL Streaming Rights For Americas;