Cricket (sport) investment and social networks [kwiqq]

Posted on | November 3, 2008 | 3 Comments

Cricket known as gentlemen’s game back in the days, has recently racked several billions of dollars of investment in sponsorship and advertising. For readers who are less familiar with the game a quick overview:

(Source Wikipedia)

Cricket is a bat-and-ball team sport that originated in England and is now played in more than 100 countries. A cricket match is contested by two teams, usually of eleven players each and is played on a grass field in the centre of which is a flat strip of ground 22 yards (20 m) long called a pitch.

Indian cricket has seen some massive financial institutions like UK based private equity firm, 3i trying to get a piece of the action. Not surprising given the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), a non-profit body controlling the game in that country, has racked up $1 billion to date from selling commercial rights to Indian cricket for the next five years. Nike paid $45 million to flash its logo on players’ apparel and to sell garments to cricket fans. Similar examples of high investment are a promising sign of the commerical implications of cricket in the sub-continent.

Given the potential financial rewards cricket has also seen growth in the social media market. Three examples I found rather interesting are listed below. All of them are directly or indirectly aimed at the Indian Subcontinent.

Fantasy Cricket (Cricket.com): If you have got use to playing Fantasy Football at your work/school. Perhaps your next challenge is Fantasy Cricket. The site is fuelled by UK based dynamic duos Kulveer and Harjeet Taggar. Fantastic idea with a super domain name, can’t do better than cricket.com. The domain was bought for $6 million (Update: Kulveer Taggar confirmed the figure of $6m is incorrect) , a nice addition to my earlier blog post about expensive social media domain names.

Cricket Blog (IndianCricketFans.com): This site allows fans to constantly get an update of the latest gossip, thoughts on past events and interviews with the team. As the name suggests the site is dedicated to the Indian Cricket team enthusiasts. There seems to be a constant stream of content put on to the blog and VBulletin Forum.

Cricket Social network (cricket360.com): Good source for up to minute news and scores. There is also an element of social networking: Profiles, blogs, forums, rating etc. Cricket360 looks like a full package of social media tools dedicated to Cricket.

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