Update: ZengaTV, the mobile video streaming delivery platform, has partnered with Sporty Solutionz to provide an exclusive mobile video streaming for the India-Sri Lanka 5 ODI’s and one T20 slated to start on July 21, 2012 in Sri Lanka. The partnership also provides ZengaTV with post-match highlights and the content will be made available on demand for a 30-day period post match. ZengaTV users will be able to watch the entire match or just a summary of the match in that 30-day period.
Earlier: Online video service iStream.com has partnered with Sporty Solutionz to secure the exclusive live streaming and video on demand rights for the upcoming India-Sri Lanka Cricket series starting July 21, 2012. Sporty Solutionz claims to have previously received the exclusive Internet and mobile rights for this cricket series from Ten Sports.
While the financial details of the deal were not disclosed, the company said that it will be live streaming all the six day-night matches on iStream.com and the content will be available on demand, for a month after the tournament ends. In addition, iStream.com will also offer pre and post-match highlights, team statistics, player profiles, trivia and other related video clips from the cricket series. Users can also sign-in through their Facebook account to post messages on the website or share any specific clip to their timeline.
Last month, iStream had signed an similar deal with Neo Sports to live stream the premium Football championship UEFA Euro 2012 on its portal as well as provide access to video on demand for the entire month. iStream has not revealed statistics for the tournament. We wonder if these deals have been profitable for the site or it’s still at a stage when it wants to garner more traffic.
Founded in 2007, iStream.com claims to have a library of over a 100,000 clips of premium News Bulletins, TV Shows and Movies in five Indian languages from over 50 channels. It also live streams 26 news channels across six different languages and offers video content from partners like Times Now, Zoom, Raj TV, Filmy, NDTV Lumiere, Vissa, Kairali TV and Viacom18, and online video sharing portals like YouTube, DailyMotion, MSN, Jagran/Yahoo, Indiatimes and Sify.
iStream also offers a native Windows 8 app which offers videos across various categories like movies, news and tv categories in English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. The company had claimed to have registered 5,000 downloads in 4 days of its launch. Last November, it had raised $5 million from SAIF Partners to launch its video streaming service.
Other Tie-ups for online streaming
ESPN STAR Sports (ESS), and The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had announced a seven year (2013-2019) contract for exclusive multi-platform rights to broadcast its domestic and home international matches.
Times Internet Limited* (Indiatimes) has the global rights to the IPL for Internet, Mobile, Radio and Television (for certain territories), and had streamed it live with a simulcast on YouTube. The company had reported a combined pageviews of 113 million pageviews during IPL 5, recording a 55% increase from 72 million pageviews in IPL 4. The pageviews from India stood at 80 million, recording a 87% increase from 43 million pageviews in IPL 4. Last year, Indiatimes had also tied up with the sports media company PERFORM, to offer online and mobile video content for English Premier League and with National Basketball Association (NBA) to launch a dedicated section on Times of India Website and Indiatimes.
In April 2012, Star India had won the broadcast, internet and mobile rights for all Indian cricket matches for the period 2012-2018, for an amount of Rs 3851 crore, replacing Nimbus, whose contract was prematurely terminated in December 2011 by the BCCI.
Disclosure: Indiatimes is an advertiser with MediaNama
