Netlinkblue Holdings, which owns live streaming and mobile rights for the Indian Premier League in select markets, has launched a Cricket portal T20.com. T20 is the term used to refer to Twenty20 Cricket, a short form of the game, and T20.com looks remarkably similar to IPLT20.com, the official website for the Indian Premier League. T20.com appears to have a wider mandate, covering T20 matches outside of the IPL, but they do not have the on-field and TV advertising support that the IPL offered IPLT20.com.
Is there any sense in trying to create a property merely around T20’s? At present, the larger events are restricted to a World Cup once every two years, a yearly Champions League T20 and the Indian Premier League. As long as there is official support, these sites will get traffic, but there will be long periods of no T20 Cricket. Perhaps Cricket will switch to a football-like league structure, but until that happens, these sites will largely be event based. In that context, sites like ESPN owned Cricinfo and Network18 owned CricketNext are likely to dominate.
Netlinkblue had initially planned to launch live streaming of the Indian Premier League at T20.com, but decided, instead, to tie up with Live Current Media (LCM), combining both live streaming rights and official portal rights into a joint venture called Global Cricket Ventures. However, going by recent LCM filings at the SEC, Netlinkblue still retains its rights. At the same time, the privacy policy at T20.com is attributed to Global Cricket Ventures.
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Contests2Win has expanded the mandate of Cricket Bookie, a virtual prediction game, to cover social networks Orkut, Facebook and MySpace. CricketBookie had been launched during the Indian Premier League a month or so ago. According to the company, over 50,000 users participated in the game: I was one of them – bet on a game, lost some virtual money, and didn’t try again. Betting is around questions like:
— Who will bat first?
— The Team winning the toss will? (Bat or Bowl)
— Who will win the toss?
— How many runs will be scored in the first 10 balls of the 1st innings?
— How many runs will be scored in the first 6 overs of the 1st innings?
— Who will win the match?
Too much of a game of chance, and I have a preference for skill based games.
Readers may remember this debate on MediaNama over whether 6UP, an SMS based game introduced by the BCCI during the IPL, was a skill based game or a game of chance. But does it really matter whether Cricket Bookie is a skill based game or a game of chance? We don’t think so: users aren’t at the risk of losing money.
Contests2Win also has similar games for the stock markets and F1, though with Button winning every race, F1 won’t be much fun.
(Updates: corrected title to refer to Contests2Win, instead of Games2Win)
Related:
— 6Up Game Pulled; If 6UP Is Gambling, Then What About Reverse Auctions?
— Channel 2 Gets ICC T20 Digital Rights; Cricket Radio With CricInfo, RCOM
— RCOM Bags Exclusive ICC World T20 Rights; Mobile TV
— Cellcast Gets IPL Mobile Content Rights For India, Covering SMS, Voice And USSD
