Harsimran Singh, FinancialExpress.com
Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 0214 hours IST
NEW DELHI, NOV 21: The mobile and online cricket content market, growing at about 100% per annum, with India accounting for almost 60% of cricket content users, has led the world's largest cricket website – Wisden's Cricinfo.com – to shift base from London to Bangalore.
“Almost 60% of Cricinfo.com’s support-base of 20 million users are Indians. About 25% are based in India while the rest (35%) are located in North America (US west coast, Canada), UK (South England), Australia and Middle East,” said Cricinfo.com CEO, Tom Gleeson, who has shifted to Bangalore from London, along with his 100 strong staff.
All top domestic Internet majors like Rediff.com, Indiatimes Cricket, Sify, Yahoo India are active players in the cricket content market. Globally BBC and ESPN are the big players in online cricket content. CNBC TV 18 has also pitched in the battle by acquiring world's second largest cricket website – the Walchand group's Cricketnext.com for an undisclosed sum in August, this year.
Interestingly, the global cricket content market's fortunes vary with Indian cricket team's fortunes. "On a match day like India v Pakistan, our unique visitor count shoots upto 3 million users per day. It also shoots up when Indian team and especially Sachin Tendulkar is holding the bat," adds Tom Gleeson.
Not only website usage, but also the number mobile cricket game industry depends upon players' form. "We see more game and wallpaper downloads when the respective cricket player is doing well," says Mobile2Win CEO Rajiv Hirnandani.
Mobile2win.com develops contests, games, wallpapers, animated scorecards for the online and mobile cricket content industry. The company developed the first mobile Sachin Tendulkar based game in India. Other content like match clips, audio, quizzes, trivia, animated logos are also very popular. While a cricket SMS costs Rs 3-6, other applications like scorecards are based on a monthly subscription of Rs 50 each.
Interestingly, the content developed by cricket websites is used by other games like soccer and tennis content users as well. For instance, the ball tracking application developed by Cricinfo.com to determine LBW decisions is being used by soccer and tennis websites globally.
High growth in the telecom market, say experts is largely responsible for the boom in cricket content. “The market cuts across age and class. However, male users are obviously more than female. A monthly addition of over 5 million mobile subscribers per month is boosting the market,” says an expert. ARPUs of telecom companies dramatically shoot up on big match days.
Shortcode based SMS like 8888, 123, 7333 are also booming. The cricket market is also importing clips from TV channels and selling it online and through mobile. The prospect of 3G-technology is expected to further boost the market.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 0214 hours IST
NEW DELHI, NOV 21: The mobile and online cricket content market, growing at about 100% per annum, with India accounting for almost 60% of cricket content users, has led the world's largest cricket website – Wisden's Cricinfo.com – to shift base from London to Bangalore.
“Almost 60% of Cricinfo.com’s support-base of 20 million users are Indians. About 25% are based in India while the rest (35%) are located in North America (US west coast, Canada), UK (South England), Australia and Middle East,” said Cricinfo.com CEO, Tom Gleeson, who has shifted to Bangalore from London, along with his 100 strong staff.
All top domestic Internet majors like Rediff.com, Indiatimes Cricket, Sify, Yahoo India are active players in the cricket content market. Globally BBC and ESPN are the big players in online cricket content. CNBC TV 18 has also pitched in the battle by acquiring world's second largest cricket website – the Walchand group's Cricketnext.com for an undisclosed sum in August, this year.
Interestingly, the global cricket content market's fortunes vary with Indian cricket team's fortunes. "On a match day like India v Pakistan, our unique visitor count shoots upto 3 million users per day. It also shoots up when Indian team and especially Sachin Tendulkar is holding the bat," adds Tom Gleeson.
Not only website usage, but also the number mobile cricket game industry depends upon players' form. "We see more game and wallpaper downloads when the respective cricket player is doing well," says Mobile2Win CEO Rajiv Hirnandani.
Mobile2win.com develops contests, games, wallpapers, animated scorecards for the online and mobile cricket content industry. The company developed the first mobile Sachin Tendulkar based game in India. Other content like match clips, audio, quizzes, trivia, animated logos are also very popular. While a cricket SMS costs Rs 3-6, other applications like scorecards are based on a monthly subscription of Rs 50 each.
Interestingly, the content developed by cricket websites is used by other games like soccer and tennis content users as well. For instance, the ball tracking application developed by Cricinfo.com to determine LBW decisions is being used by soccer and tennis websites globally.
High growth in the telecom market, say experts is largely responsible for the boom in cricket content. “The market cuts across age and class. However, male users are obviously more than female. A monthly addition of over 5 million mobile subscribers per month is boosting the market,” says an expert. ARPUs of telecom companies dramatically shoot up on big match days.
Shortcode based SMS like 8888, 123, 7333 are also booming. The cricket market is also importing clips from TV channels and selling it online and through mobile. The prospect of 3G-technology is expected to further boost the market.
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