LALIT Modi’s announcement of the Google-IPL tie-up earned cricket the sort of publicity that the sport should have been dreaming of. Worldwide news coverage promoting cricket as technically ground breaking is just what the sport needs. The showman was back on the world stage and exploiting the moment as only he can.
The agreement is a clever one from all sorts of perspectives. Firstly it directly takes on the irritation of the online pirates. What’s the point of creating or watching an illegal pirate feed when you have a high quality reliable feed on a site that you can trust. We’ve learnt over the years that the live match coverage will find its way online somehow, so the only way to beat the pirates is to do it properly and to make it free and advertiser funded (as Ten Sports did with the Compaq Cup in Sri Lanka)
Secondly, the tie-up with Google takes the waste of income that is a pirated feed and turns it into revenue on an advertising share with Google. The growth figures for online revenue in the “broadband” markets are staggering and the IPL can benefit from a slice of that action.
Third, it provides a useful tool that benefits cricket fans everywhere, even those with conventional access to the live coverage. Accessing the archive feeds and news reports around the games at a time that suits the viewer is a concept that works around the lifestyle of cricket fans everywhere, but particularly those in time zones outside Asia.
Fourth, making the games available online solves a need for the franchises to be given worldwide exposure. One of the big disconnects between the perception of the IPL and the reality of the IPL is its lack of visibility worldwide. In the world’s cricket TV markets, the IPL has simply not been in the right places. The franchises want the worldwide exposure, and currently it’s not where it should be.
In the UK and Pakistan, there is no TV deal, in the Middle East and North America there is a minimal legal audience on the Asian TV platforms or pay per view. In Australia it’s also off the mainstream on Ten’s HD platform. With the exception of the South African market the world is not watching the IPL live because so few can find it on a TV near them.
There are plenty of reasons for this, including the inate conservatism of international TV buyers at a time when the IPL was a new unproven product three years ago.
I think it should also be said that the IPL is not necessarily the home of the world’s top players. I appreciate this will sound like unnecessary criticism, but look at the evidence.
This year, the first choice Australians and New Zealanders are playing each other elsewhere, Pakistan’s 20-20 world champions are uninvited. There is a small sprinkling of the English, but the foreigners are largely the retired, the second tier Australians, the South Africans, the Sri Lankans and the West Indians. Even the big playing brands from year 1 are disappearing as McGrath and Fleming step off the stage.
The beauty of the IPL is that it is big enough and has such momentum for such criticisms not to matter. It doesn’t really matter what the IPL teams did or failed to do at the Champions League, it doesn’t really affect its present income as to whether the world is watching live.
The IPL is above all an Indian phenomenon and the money keeps flowing faster and faster from Indian advertisers and Indian fans.
Seven of the eight teams had an Indian as their leading wicket taker last season, three of the eight had an Indian as their leading run scorer despite the millions spent on the foreign guns for hire.
Once you understand that basic Indian truth at the essence of the YouTube deal, then the explanation of the IPL’s ground breaking agreement becomes clearer.
The English Premier League or even the ICC cricket make money worldwide from multiple pay TV platforms, who pay huge money for exclusive broadcast rights in their territories. For established sports organisations to endorse free live streaming would be impossible (even with a five minute delayed stream as is the case with the IPL-YouTube deal wherever in the world TV deals are in place).
Those leagues and federations simply couldn’t do a live streaming deal with YouTube without jeopardising their current significant revenue sources around the world.
The IPL is able to re-write the broadcasting rule book as it has re-written so many other areas. It can do so because it has no history to tie it down and is open to radical innovation. It will upset people along the way, treading on century old footprints, but it is difficult to see anything slowing the juggernaut as it marches into year 3.
The true test of international playing strength will be after the huge auction before season 4. The true test of the two-season Google deal will be when we see it how it affects the international TV income.
Major live international sport live on the web without any charge to the viewer is a radical concept that challenges the basic tenet of the worlds sport’s TV business. With the IPL, we have learnt to sneer at our own risk – it is certainly a solution that will suit the franchises for now, and one to watch with interest.
The author is COO, Taj Television Ltd.
