Cricinfo to revamp strategy

Online cricket publishing firm Cricinfo, owned by ESPN, a part of the Walt Disney Group, is in the process of revamping its business strategy, post its acquisition by ESPN in June this year.

The company is working on a broader strategy to infuse multimedia elements to Cricinfo online, leveraging the expertise of ESPN, which has multimedia presence through radio, TV channels and magazine in the global market.

To start with the company is soon going to introduce video content related to cricket in its website.

The new initiative, is based on the plans to leverage ESPN's technical know-how in streaming video content in different mediums, and utilise the cricket video content available with it.

The video streaming in Cricinfo portal is going to be kicked off during January next year, when the Indian cricket team will be touring Australia, according to official sources.

"We will increasingly move under the ESPN umbrella, in terms of certain brand guidelines. Video obviously is going to be one focus area for us. Presently, we have very limited video content in our site, since we don't have rights to many cricket properties. We are now creating technical infrastructure in serving video content, leveraging the expertise of Walt Disney and ESPN Internet Group, who have huge capabilities in terms of video serving," said R Ramesh Kumar, Commercial Director, Cricinfo.

Cricinfo is working on to come out with both live and non-live video contents. The non-live video contents would mostly include archival contents, match highlights and classical moments of Indian cricket, especially the properties which are owned by ESPN.

Besides, ESPN is looking at using the cricket video content owned by Classic Sports, a division of ESPN which has exclusive rights to all ESPN-owned match footings.

"There is no other way to get access to classical cricket videos. If we put this out on online, it will be a great help for lots of cricket lovers across the world," Kumar added.

Cricinfo is also trying to create Web 2.0 products which can be highly interactive so as to keep a user involved with the match and retain them. Interactive products like super selective and choose the dream team depending on the performance of the players, would be offered in the site.

Cricinfo averages about 20 million users per month. India has the highest user base for the company followed by North AmericaôCanada, Gulf countries, UK and Australia.