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. * Contests2Win has…
