NDTV Convergence the digital arm of NDTV has announced a revamp of its cricket portal CricketNDTV.com. According to their release the new site features such as a video section providing coaching and fitness tips from renowned experts, a revamped blog section, quizzes, contests and a more exhaustive cricket calendar. It appears that NDTV is banking heavily on the video coaching section on the site which dominates the new changes made on the portal. The coaching videos have been developed in partnership with coach Ian Pont.
It wouldn’t be far fetched to imagine that these changes have been made considering the IPL and other high profile tournaments coming this year. The domestic 20-20 league is hardly a month away and is already creating quite a buzz. Last year the Internet charts were soaring with the IPL buzz which also made quite a lot of business possible, ask Eklavya 
. The IPL is immediately followed by the 20-20 World Cup if I’m not wrong and India also has a busy touring shcedule including the tour to New Zealand right now. Timing wise this launch certainly seems to target the hype and business of Twenty20. Another reason of course being that a faster version like T20 offers a lot of viral like and popular video opportunities – Yuvraj’s six sixers for instance. This falls right in line with the changes that NDTV has made to the portal.
On the other hand, NDTV had announced the launch of its exclusive video portal a few weeks back. Rajiv considered it their biggest foray into the web products space. What gives Tubaah the advantage over other popular video sharing sites being NDTV owns the copyright on the content. This is the same reason Hulu.com had better earnings than YouTube (on a relative basis). The current crop of changes on CricketNDTV also aims at creating value content in one of the most popular niches online in India – Cricket. Therefore this piece of news can also be a direct follow up to the strategy of launching Tubaah.com. The fact that Tubaah finds itself a prominent centerpiece place on the portal’s header only adds fuel to this thought.
And who knows, maybe both these reasons are driving the chain of launces and revamps at the NDTV stable.
However, if you search for cricket on Google, CricketNDTV isn’t anywhere in the top rankings, while other major cricket portals including network 18′s in.com which has all the makings of a prime competitor for NDTV convergence find their ranks in the top 10. This might mean NDTV will have to push some paid campaigns perhaps over on top of their network real estate to attract more audience.
