By Lucy-Claire Saunders

The game of cricket will never be the same. And neither will the way it's marketed around the world. A Vancouver-based communications company has bought the exclusive rights to build web portals for  the Indian cricket board as well as the Indian Premier League (IPL) at a combined cost of $50
million.

Current Live Media will pay the IPL a minimum revenue share of $2 million a year, and the  Board of Control for Cricket in India  (BCCI) $3 million a year for the exclusive online rights to official photos, video footage, live scoreboards, match results statistics, a fantasy cricket league, ticketing, fan polling and  contests.

“We've got exclusive rights for all of Indian cricket,” CEO of Current Live Media Geoffrey Hampson told the South Asian Post. “The potential is huge. We're talking about building a very large media enterprise and we're just in the every beginnings of this.”

With the birth of Twenty twenty, or T20, the rules of cricket are being redefined for an audience that appreciates a livelier atmosphere where smaller targets are to be completed with greater run rates.

“The new format is much more of an exciting game,” Hampson said. “The T20 format is geared up to be two-and-a-half hours long, a lot more action and will generate a lot more traditional professional sports types of interest.”

Globally there are about 1.2 billion cricket fans, Live Current Media estimates and as the IPL is already on track to generate $2 billion, the Internet commerce and media company has positioned itself in a Rupert Murdoch-like vantage point.

Cricket as a global sport is the second largest sport in the world in terms of the numbers of fans, said Hampson. “When people hear that, they're usually surprised because it just doesn't show up on the radar screen of North America. The biggest potential for  monetization is obviously India.

“We're not really contemplating the Canadian market. There are certainly non-resident Indians, Pakistani, South Africans and west indies populations that have a keen interest in canad but it is a global audience we're aiming for.”

While the larger Canadian public is not all that into cricket, it's immigrant populations are generally an untapped market base. As a result, large financial instructions like Scotiabank and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) are spending millions in sponsoring Canadian cricket.

“The cricket fan base is very active and tend to be reasonably affluent in the Canadian market,” said Hampson. “The banks are trying to get at those ethnic communities and the way to get to them is to sponsor the sport that they're passionate about.”

Scotiabank announced a three year  sponsorship deal with Cricket Canada and the men's and women's national teams while RBC launched its Wicket Cricket program, including complete cricket starter kits for school physical education classes. 

“But for most Canadians,” said Hampson, “they have absolutely no idea how the game is played or even understand how things are evolving in terms of the format of the game from the more traditional test match to the new T20 format.”

Live Current Media also owns the much sought after cricket website address, www.cricket.com, which it bought in 1994. The firm builds, owns and operates some of the most powerful and engaging content and commerce on the websites.

“We've developed a strategy for building businesses around these domain names,” said Hampson.  If you think about cricket as a global sport, India is the leading market. The experience around cricket.com is going to encompass Indian cricket for now and then later we're going to other markets to do the same thing.”

Becky Porter, a spokesperson for Live Curent Media who has been in Bangalore, says she has been inundated with cricket talk since she arrived in Bangalore last week.

“It's been nothing but cricket 24/7,” she said.

Last year, Current Live Media reported revenues of $9 million and a net loss of $2 million. The communications company launched the IPL portal, www.iplt20.com, last Friday to coincide with the season opener match between Bangalore and Kolkata.

The BCCI portal will become fully functional after its formal launch in August. Although the BCCI has a website - www.bcci.tv - it only had a static board emblem to show till a few days ago. Now, it is selling IPL tickets through ticketpro.in.

A basic IPL website -- www.indianpremierleague.com -- was launched some time ago with very basic information, largely for its eight franchises, like the buyers' prospectus. Now, the website is not
accessible.

Once both the websites become functional, the BCCI will launch its mobile service.

The BCCI is the only one among the 10 Test-playing countries that does not have a fully functional website.

On the brink into cricket abyss, Hampson sees a future full of possibilities.

“Up until recently, there hasn't been a professional league, there hasn't been intercity rivalries,” he said.  I think the IPL and the T20 format is going to revolutionize the game and the fan base. And we're at the ground floor.”

--with files from IANS