Monday, June 11, 2007

ESPN acquires Cricinfo

ESPN International has acquired Cricinfo website. Note that the acquisition is by ESPN International and not ESPN-Star Sports the Disney-Murdoch joint venture. ESPN Star Sports has its own sports site www.espnstar.com, but that doesn't have the same fan base as Cricinfo. So there will be some tension between ESPN-Star and ESPN International on how Cricinfo is treated.

Disney's long term gameplan is not clear. However, looking at Soccernet, I am not very confident that great things may happen with cricinfo.espn.go.com (as the site will be renamed soon).

Current Cricinfo earnings are too small to merit enough focus here from ESPN bigwigs.

A few things, well funded Cricinfo can do (but may not do):
  • Video scorecards of every Test and One-day match - at least the wickets and fours/sixes clips linked to every match scorecard.
  • Additional key moments like centuries, fifties, controversial (non-)dismissals etc.
  • These clips to be linked to the statsguru database.
  • A good mobile interface to statsguru, as well as the above video database
  • Allowing for embedding (ad supported and delivered by Cricinfo) video clips into third party blogs, when fans want to build up an argument and support the argument with video.
  • Archived full highlights of video of classic past matches for pay-per-view streaming.
  • Live audio streaming (legal I suppose. Off tube may not work with Disney) of all Test and One-day matches online (paid + ad supported).
  • Video profiles/biographies (30 mins) of important Test cricketers (both online and offline in the form of DVDs)
  • Better coverage of domestic cricket in all Test playing countries, including live scorecards of first-class games