Will The Battle For Mobile Live Streaming Rights Heat Up Once 3G Services Launch?

Does the acquisition of Cricket live streaming rights really translate into revenue and profitability? Tell us what you think. The latest is that Reliance Communications has partnered with the International Cricket Council as its ‘Global Partner” for the 2011 Cricket World Cup, beginning on February 19, 2011, and will offer live mobile streaming, scores and commentary, as well as the official theme song as caller tune. All in all, there will be 49 matches.

So far, with the exception of Reliance Communications for a few tournaments, live streaming rights have mostly been picked up by independent aggregators like Apalya Technologies or Zenga, and offered through multiple telecom operators. The difference with the 2011 World Cup is that telecom operators will have 3G services live, and they will be looking to drive signups for 3G services, or to make existing customers convert to 3G.

So if the end goal is signups, not revenue from the live streaming, then the acquisition of rights will be seen as a marketing spend. RCOM has taken the rights for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, but there’s an even bigger tournament after that, and the demand for IPL-4 mobile live streaming rights could well go up. For now, though, the fate of IPL-4 is still uncertain, and we don’t know if GCV still has rights.

company has bagged the license to offer 3G services in 13 key circles including Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. Reliance Mobile also offers pan-India CDMA and GSM Services across 24000 towns and 6 lakh Indian villages serving over 115 million customers.

From the press release, what RCOM plans to offer:
– Audio and video content on both 3G and 2G platforms during the ICC CWC 2011, on ICC zone on R-World VAS platform: match highlights videos, watch previews and match round-ups.
– WAP and SMS Alerts
– Live audio commentary and moment-by-moment text commentary on their handsets
– Download wallpapers and ringtones
– ICC rankings
– Archived content of previous tournaments
– News & analysis of match/tournament/players
– Ball-by-ball score updates on WAP
– Application for iPhone, iTouch devices, Blackberry, Android & Symbian enabled devices, Nokia Ovi Store, Java devices and Samsung app store handsets.

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