ESPN widens online portfolio, buys cricket site CricInfo

[DesiChap]

ESPN widens online portfolio, buys cricket site CricInfo By Robert Daniel Last Update: 2:35 AM ET Jun 11, 2007 TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- ESPN, the sports-entertainment company owned 80% by Walt Disney Co. and 20% by closely held Hearst Corp., expanded its online offerings by acquiring the cricket Website CricInfo from Wisden Group. Terms weren't disclosed. ESPN already operates ESPN.com, ESPNdeportes.com, a Spanish-language sports site, and the English-language ESPNsoccernet.com. Cricinfo, founded 1993 and based in London, reaches more than seven million users monthly, ESPN and Wisden said in a statement. Disney is the Burbank, Calif., entertainment giant. Wisden said it will continue to focus on its Hawk-Eye sports-technology business "in cricket, tennis and a growing range of other sports."

[varun]

ESPN acquires Cricinfo http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/ci/content/current/story/297655.html ESPN acquires Cricinfo Cricinfo staff June 11, 2007

In another significant landmark in its evolution, Cricinfo has been acquired by ESPN, the global sports media powerhouse. The acquisition was announced by ESPN and the Wisden Group earlier this morning. With this, Cricinfo joins a stable of top-drawer sports websites including ESPN.com, the US's premier online sports destination, and ESPNsoccernet.com - the world's leading English-language football website. "Growing our business in the online world is vital for us to serve sports fans," said Russell Wolff, managing director of ESPN International. "Cricinfo is a tremendous property with a great fan base and it will be a strong addition to ESPN." Explaining the decision, Mark Getty, director of the Wisden Group, said: "Cricinfo has developed into a significant cricket brand in its own right, combining huge global popularity with strong commercial success. ESPN is a major sports broadcaster and international rights holder and will provide the perfect environment for Cricinfo to further realise its enormous potential." The Wisden Group, Getty said, would continue to focus on its Hawk-Eye sports technology business in cricket, tennis and a growing range of other sports. "We have had a strong working relationship with ESPN for a number of years," Tom Gleeson, Cricinfo's managing director, said, "and we know how successful they are in providing innovative online sports content. We look forward to drawing on ESPN's expertise in sports marketing and digital media." Today's announcement marks the latest stage of Cricinfo's evolution since its inception, in 1993, as an online community of cricket fans supplying cricket-related information on a voluntary basis. Cricket lends itself perfectly to online coverage: the length of matches and the statistics-rich nature of the game combine to drive high global usage and build loyalty, and that's where Cricinfo has scored. Beginning with scorecards and live scores, the portal pioneered audio and video streaming of cricket matches. After few years of independent existence, Cricinfo received its first major investment in 1999 from Sify, an Indian IT company, which acquired a majority stake in the company. It changed hands four years later when the Wisden Group, which then ran its own cricket website, wisden.com, bought it. Since then Cricinfo has built on its reputation for providing accurate, live scoring from cricket matches the world over, by adding ball-by-ball commentary for most international games and building a database including every one of the 3000 international and 45,000 first-class cricketers to have played the game. It always had breadth, and it acquired depth by tapping into Wisden's traditional strengths in terms of comment, analysis and general reportage by the world's leading cricket writers. The merger of those two resources has made Cricinfo the world's leading cricket website today, ranked number one in all of its major markets and reaching more than seven million users every month. The site's reach, authority and brand recognition is unrivalled in the online cricket world. And Cricinfo now reaches beyond the Internet - so that fans can get Cricinfo content on mobile applications and on some of the world's leading internet portals. © Cricinfo ---------------------------------------------------------- I wonder what the ramifications will be on Cricinfo.

[Cricketics]

was famous before only, now hope it would get better after getting merged..

[King]

Good on them, ESPN is good for cricket. They cover a lot of cricket and I've watched some really cool cricket archives on ESPN STAR when I have visited India. I think they will take cricinfo to a new level. Expect free video highlights from now on for the games ESPN has right to. Already they have highlights available for Asia vs Africa games. I think this is good for cricket.

[King]

Letter from the editor An unshakeable bond Sambit Bal June 11, 2007 Dear Readers, I am not going to pretend that the lead-up to this has not been fraught. Change, however inevitable or even desirable, is rarely easy on the nerves; for those of us burdened with the knowledge of the imminent, there has been more than the odd anxious moment. A takeover represents more than mere change to those being taken over. At the least there's the uncertainty over work culture; beyond that there's the fear of loss of identity, autonomy, and yes, jobs. I should know a bit about what a takeover can mean. Cricinfo was acquired by Wisden four years ago, and I was then on the other side of the fence. Cricinfo was easily the number one cricket website then, yet we made plenty of changes. We added staff, streamlined editorial processes, brought in new servers, changed the design and, in fact, four years later, we are still changing. The internet is a restless and hungry medium: to stay contemporary and relevant, it needs fresh ideas and, let's not be coy about it, fresh investments. Cricinfo will not lose its name, nor its voice. And it will remain committed to covering every international cricket match live and with the same journalistic rigour and integrity that you have come to expect from us To all of us who love cricket, Cricinfo is a phenomenon, a cult, a faith. It is one of the true wonders of the internet. It owes its inception to passion, ingenuity and innovation and its survival and growth is a triumph of the entrepreneurial spirit that infected everyone who came in touch with it. I remember Mark Mascarenhas - better known as the man who showed Sachin Tendulkar the money but whose real achievement was raising the standard of live cricket broadcast in India - telling me after he had offered to me the job of building total-cricket.com, "Welcome, let's beat the **** out of Cricinfo." Mark had the money and the heart to spend it, and he had on his roster the who's who of cricket. But total-cricket.com lasted about a year. I was also involved in the setting up of www.wisden.com, which carried the most powerful brand name in cricket media. It had an editor who knew his job and a bunch of talented professional journalists as opposed to Cricinfo's merry band of enthusiastic amateurs. Our objective was clear: we were not there to compete with Cricinfo but to create a parallel, value-added, boutique site for the discerning cricket reader. We also expected him to pay for the privilege. The editorial mission was reasonably successful but nobody paid up. It was then that Mark Getty, decided to acquire Cricinfo. It turned out to be the perfect match. Cricinfo brought in the breadth, Wisden the depth. Cricinfo had the users, Wisden the professional nous. The new site operated as wisdencricinfo.com for a while and those of us involved in wisden.com felt a sense of loss when the site became cricinfo.com again but, with hindsight, it was the right decision. Cricinfo deserved to stand alone. What now? Cricinfo is now part of the world's leading sports media business. It is owned by Disney, one of the world's largest media and entertainment companies with business interests as diverse as movies and theme parks. Will Cricinfo be able to retain its identity, its spirit and its independence? Yes, a few things could change. We will have access to better technology and design facilities, our multimedia capabilities will be enhanced and, who knows, some day there might even be Cricinfo TV. On the internet, you are limited only by your imagination. We will continue dreaming. But I can tell you with a degree of assurance what will not change. To start with, Cricinfo will not lose its name, nor its voice. And it will remain committed to covering every international cricket match live and with the same journalistic rigour and integrity that you have come to expect from us. Whatever matters to cricket, we will cover it; and whatever threatens cricket, we will raise our voice against it. And we have been acquired not by venture capitalists but by a company with a proud record in sports broadcasting and with a huge presence in online publishing. And we have been acquired because we have been successful. It gives us comfort and confidence. And, come to think of it, need we ever worry about who owns Cricinfo? Ultimately it belongs to cricket, and to you. And that's an unshakeable bond. Gratefully yours Sambit Bal Sambit Bal is the editor of Cricinfo and Cricinfo Magazine

[King]

But I can tell you with a degree of assurance what will not change. To start with, Cricinfo will not lose its name, nor its voice. And it will remain committed to covering every international cricket match live and with the same journalistic rigour and integrity that you have come to expect from us. Whatever matters to cricket, we will cover it; and whatever threatens cricket, we will raise our voice against it.

All Sambit Bal is saying is that we will continue our stupid Tendulkar bashing not with standing who acquires us. I think there will be less agenda driven articles now on Cricinfo. There will be a little appeasing of sub continent mass considering ESPN's strong TV base is in the sub continent. Cricinfo definitely will see better professionals than some agenda driven writers.

[apocalypse]

hope this dumb a$$ sambit bal will be thrown out first. yeah now people on cricinfo will not use it to lent out their frustrations on a particular player

[gator]

2 differences.... 1. Journalism standards will improve after some idi0ts are laid off including articles by bhogle, shastri et al... 2. More multimedia content, instead of searching in youtube...