IPL is seeing massive commercial success in India and the same is being heavily monetized by the cricket board. So after giving away the online streaming streaming rights to Youtube, IPL has now allotted mobile rights for SMS, MMS, 3G and IVR related services to vRock Mobile for a period of 5 years.
vRock Mobile under the terms of agreement will be the exclusive provider of IPL based mobile services on GSM as well as CDMA platform. It has thus bagged worldwide rights to offer IPL related scores,competition and IVR commentary on SMS, MMS, WAP, EDGE and 3G. vRock mobile can provide audio commentary and organize various IPL related SMS competitions even in tie-up with Telecom operators.
vRock Mobile is new entrant in mobile VAS space and it is quite surprising IPL board has chosen such inexperienced players to monetize its services on a global scale. vRock mobile will be sole provider of SMS and other mobile based alerts and it has already hinted at IPR proceedings against Telcos offending on its rights territory. This will be a daunting challenge for vRock as most of the Telcos are eager to fend off IPR to start their own cricket alerts for IPL matches.
According to VRock Mobile Communications CEO Jatin Ahluwalia, “The IPL is an excellent platform for vRock Mobile to offer some truly unique services to IPL fans around the world. We have planned some exciting and engaging SMS and MMS – based contests to build consumer engagement with youthful cricket loving audiences. We promise to deliver to Cricket and IPL fans the world over an exhilarating, enhanced and rich user experience on their mobile handsets.”
IPL board is leaving no stone unturned in monetizing its brand loyalty as in recent time it has even gone after media channels to stall any attack on its broadcasting rights partner. The appointment of different third party right holders has also created buffer for it to garner minimum guarantee revenues for such rights which has huge revenue potential going forward. IPL is even looking at allotting mobile video rights to different party although that could create conflicts with youtube as it already has serious presence on mobile web.
vRock can expect good revenues as its will be the sole provider of such IPL based mobile services and can expect support of IPL board to bring telcos to its fold. The advent of 3G by next year will also make its 3G based service offerings much more adoptable to Indian mobile market.
