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.
