Cricinfo all set to enter US, West Asia

With the Cricket World Cup round the corner, Cricinfo Mobile, a business venture of the Wisden Group-owned Cricinfo, is going to roll out its service offerings in the United States and West Asia.

Cricinfo Mobile which provides cricket-related mobile content in India and some foreign countries, is primarily targeting the large expatriate Indian communities in the US and Middle East. Said Anil Nair, head, Cricinfo Mobile, "The mobile value-added services industry is expected to grow Rs 4,500 crore in 2007, from its present size of Rs 2,800 crore. We expect cricket to be a key revenue driver for many telecom companies especially during the World Cup and Cricinfo Mobile is aggressively preparing to tap this growing demand." Cricinfo has already tied up with major telecom operators in the US including Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, Cingular and T-Mobile through its short code - 64646.

In the West Asia, Cricinfo is zeroing on countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. The company is in its advanced stages of dialogues with telecom operators including Mobily (Etisalat) and STC in Saudi Arabia, Watania and MTC Vodafone in Kuwait, Du, Watania in the UAE, Qtel in Qatar and MTC Vodafone in Bahrain.

The mobile service is the youngest business venture of Cricinfo launched in 2004. According to Nair, Cricinfo Mobile's income last fiscal (October-September) was on a par with its revenue from Cricinfo online. The mobile business also grew close to 50 per cent during the year as compared to the previous year. "Even before we reached the consumers directly by launching our own short code in October last year, we recorded 35 million SMS traffic alone," said Nair.

Keeping an eye on the business opportunity during the World Cup, the company is bringing in more cricket-related content on the mobile devices. Just eight months after launching its flagship offering Cricinfo Genie, an animated version of live cricket match in simulated format, the company will soon launch its second version. "In the second version, we are working to stream contests when the match is on. This will help keep viewers engaged during the match," he added. Once the company adds enough consumers for its Cricinfo Genies, Nair said, the offering could also become an effective model for generating revenue through advertisements.

The company is also working with Bangalore-based Dhruv Interactive, its multimedia partner, to provide fun animations on demand to mobile subscribers. The company is also developing mobile games which would help one to develop his bowling and batting techniques. This will be launched before the World Cup.

At present, 60-70 per cent of Cricinfo Mobile's revenue comes from its SMS business and of this, 90 per cent of the SMS traffic comes from India. The company plans to aggressively market the business in the UK and the US. "We want to penetrate the US and UK to take the SMS traffic from abroad to 25 per cent from the present 10 per cent," said Nair.