ESPN Cricket

ESPN prides itself on being “The Worldwide Leader in Sports”, and its 24 hour sports programmes reach global audiences where other broadcasters fear to tread.

In June 2007, ESPN Star Sports (ESS) launched a 24 hour cable TV cricket channel called Star Cricket targeting Indian audiences. Star Cricket has a massive audience even in global terms, transmitting to 25 countries and 150 million households across Asia. It is also available via the satellite broadcasters TataSky TV and Dish TV. It includes live cricket, highlights and cricket news updates.

But, the ESS interest in cricket doesn’t stop at Star Cricket. They have the ICC telecast rights for the next six years, including test match and ODI cricket and two World Cups. And, in another show of the financial might of Twenty20, ESS paid the vast sum of £572m for the commercial and marketing rights to the inaugural Twenty20 Champions League for the next ten years. This makes the Champions League the highest value cricket event on a per game basis, and the competition hasn’t even started yet.

So, ESS is mind bogglingly big, but it doesn’t sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity. One of their successful tactics has been to recruit the top commentators in the sports it covers. The Star Cricket commentary team of a “Few Good Men” includes Harsha Bogle, Ian Chappell, Sunil Gavaskar, Wasim Akram and Ravi Shastri. Harsha Bogle was interviewed during a BBC Test Match Special broadcast from India, and the TMS team-who are not easily impressed-were in awe of Harsha’s broadcasts to such a colossal audience.

ESPN’s internet interests have also expanded with the acquisition of Cricinfo, the world’s biggest cricket web site. Cricinfo is one of the top 250 ranked web sites in the world, with a following in all the test playing countries and an average 7 million visitors 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 has come a long way since its birth in 1993 as an online community of cricket fans, to becoming the stable mate of one of the world’s biggest sports broadcasters. This can only be a good thing, as ESS aims to build on the growing interest in cricket in the USA. But, what about a Chinese language version of Cricinfo, to build on ESS’s existing connection to the cricket-hungry Chinese? You read it here first…

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