You could soon be watching cricket matches live streamed online; and that could be as early as during the upcoming tri-series involving India, New Zealand and Sri Lanka in September. Well, this is not a novelty if you are one of the diaspora watching live cricket all the while on Cricinfo for a fee. But a Hulu-kind video website is soon to be launched by NBC Universal in partnership with Ten Sports for the Indian and West Asian audience.
This shall be the first of its kind sports video website in India and while it is meant to be focused on all sports (I pray that includes F1), knowing the demographics well, it could be a majorly cricket based video site. The website is currently in closed trials and shall be launched very soon to the public.
There are two issues of concern here. Firstly, it is the broadband internet speeds which is languishing in most places in India. Are Indians ready for such bandwidth-hungry websites that could prove to be a big disappointment for users who have to bear with frequent buffering? But the company is supposedly toying with compression technologies that could improve the speeds from the viewer ends. If you were one of those like me who followed the second edition of IPL on the web, you would agree that this issue with bandwidth can actually be solved with better technology.
The second issue of concern is the monetization. The digital content cannot make real money unless there is decent traction; and even with traction it is not entirely plausible that advertisers shall get the returns as they do with conventional medium like TV. If past experience is anything to go by, the live streaming of IPL-2 went largely unmonetized. Also, it would be illogical to introduce pay-for-view revenue models as they simply won’t work in India.
Nevertheless, it is a good start. NBC Universal also holds a 26% stake in NDTV’s UK division and so it is possible that the digital content is distributed on NDTV as well. That brings us to another revenue model – content distribution to other online properties. BCCL has already expressed interest to stream live content to their audiences on IndiaTimes.com. It waits to be seen how this is going to be received. Perhaps it is time to do away with stealthy score checking on cricket websites at office and enjoy some community time watching a cricket match with your boss during lunch hours!
