There are strategic moves and then there are moves that leave you confused and bewildered. Global Cricket Ventures the company that has the rights to the IPL on digital and mobile and which was recently in the news along with BCCI for entering a 2 year deal with Youtube for Online streaming has now gone ahead and announced the acquisition of Willow.tv an online portal known for live streaming cricket matches.
Willow.tv had earlier in 2008 too streamed live IPL matches to the North American audiences. This new deal makes them a part of GCV. Willow.tv was earlier reported as being sold to Reliance Entertainment and it had also announced an investment of 75 crores which was then reported to have fallen off due to valuation mismatch.
This deal leaves me scratching my head wondering as to why would GCV acquire a live streaming company on one hand and also do a live streaming deal with youtube on the other. The only logic or reasoning I could see is that the Youtube deal must be India specific only i.e. the Youtube url for streaming i.e. youtube.com/ipl would be viewable only by an Indian audience. So we spoke to the Google India PR and were updated that except for the US markets everywhere else the feed would be exclusive and streamed live via Youtube. In US Youtube would be rebroadcasting the match and it wont be a live stream. While GCV’s newly acquired property in Willow.tv would stream IPL matches live to the US centric audience.
It seems GCV would be attracting the best of both worlds as Willow.tv unlike the youtube streaming wont be free which means users in US would pay to watch the streaming. While im sure Youtube i.e. Google India paid a good amount to GVC for the global rights of live streaming (minus US markets).
