(17 April 2008 8:30 pm)

MUMBAI: Canadian company Live Current Media will pay $50 million (around Rs 2 billion) for the website rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

Live Current Media (LCM) has inked a 10-year deal with IPL and the BCCI to develop and generate revenue from two portals, IPLT20.com and BCCItv.

IPLT20.com will launch tomorrow as the official website of the IPL.

As per the agreement, IPL will get a guaranteed payment of $2 million and the BCCI $3 million a year. LCM will, thus, have to shell out $5 million a year for the online rights.

The agreement includes extensive co-marketing and exclusive online content rights agreements for Live Current to build, launch and operate the official online destinations.

The BCCI and the DLF Indian Premier League will be guaranteed the revenues through revenue sharing agreements including percentages of advertising, sponsorship and
merchandising sales.

The site will offer access to official league content including audio-visual, photographs, live scoreboards and summaries, match results, Fantasy Cricket, player interviews, profiles, schedules, statistics, ticketing and fan interaction through polls, contests and newsletters.

The launch of IPLT20.com enables businesses from around the world to access millions of cricket fans through advertising and branding of the official site, an official release said. In the same vein as major sports media events such as the World Cup, the DLF IPL is predicted to be a major revenue generator, on track towards its target of $2 billion in its inaugural season through franchise and rights sales, advertising, sponsorships and ticket sales.

DLP IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi says, “I expect the site to extend the stadium experience of a cricket match to the worldwide audience of cricket fans at large. The www.IPLT20.com website is highly interactive and includes everything a cricket fan would need to get their daily, hourly and minute-by-minute fix.”

Speaking specifically of the relationship with LCM, Modi adds: “We chose to work with Live Current because of its vision of developing a consumer hub for that provides IPL fans globally with free and direct access to the play-by-play action and ability to connect with those aspects that they love about the game – from the international stars to the on-field
action.”

IMG senior corporate director Andrew Wildblood says, “Based on our experience, we predict that the Indian Premier League will be one of the biggest sports and entertainment media events in the world. Having managed significant sports media of this size, we recognize the immense opportunity for IPLT20.com to enable passionate fans to connect with the content they want from wherever they are around the world, and for brands in India and around the world to gain
visibility to this huge audience.”

Live Current Media CEO and chairman Geoffrey Hampson says, “Our team extends North America, the UK and India and is set on creating the most interactive environment for cricket fans worldwide to engage in the world of Indian cricket from wherever they live.

“These partnerships represent enormous value for Live Current in the form of exclusive rights to IPL and BCCI content. The relationship is very strategic for us as we build a world class sports media business to serve the immense fan base for cricket.”

Live Current’s DestinationHubs integrates all aspects by which users interact with the Internet and the sport of cricket to discover more and get closer to the information they are passionate about in their daily lives. Today’s launch of IPLT20.com is the first of many sites to be developed by the new Live Current team, including newly acquired individuals formerly with Auctomatic. The Auctomatic team and developer, Ankur Nagpal bring experience with social media and application development such as Fantasy Cricket on
Facebook on the IPLT20.com site which will be fully leveraged across Cricket.com and other future Live Current destinations.