Cricinfo’s mobile plans

Posted on | February 24, 2007 |

Hindu Business Line has a story on leading cricket portal Cricinfo’s mobile plans. Read through the post to learn about the plans. But there’s one problem. Go towards the end of post to find out.

Anil Nair, Creative Head, Wireless Media, Cricinfo:

“We were one of the earliest providers of mobile cricket content. It started as a basic need through SMS scores when one couldn’t watch the match as he was away from the TV or travelling. But as technology is growing and handsets are getting better, activities on the mobile phone are getting more sophisticated. Although SMS still dominates the range of value-added services, its market is slowly being saturated. We are trying to prepare for the next stage through more complex applications through channels like MMS and WAP sites,”

Cricinfo works with Bangalore-based company Dhruva Interactive for its mobile phone applications and offers games, scores, alerts, ring tones and audio match analysis, apart from an application called Cricinfo Genie, which allows consumers to watch cricket live on their phones in an animated format.

Cricinfo Mobile will promote its services aggressively by buying online inventory and advertising on niche Web sites. Cricinfo believes all this will lead to a 25 per cent increase in uptake of all its mobile services during the World Cup. It is also expecting a 10-15 per cent conversion (of audience) from its portal Cricinfo to its mobile platform.

Some factoids from the article:

• Mobile value-added services industry is worth Rs 2,850 crore
• It could be Rs 4,560 crore by end-2007
• And cricket is a key revenue driver of this
• About 15% of mobiles in India are on the GPRS platform
• And a large portion of that is in the 15-25 age bracket
• There are 3-4 million unique visitors to Cricinfo.com a month
• The second highest traffic on Cricinfo.com comes from the US

The plans look good and Cricinfo might be well positioned to capitalise from the mobile VAS business. But there is a problem which the HBL article does not mention. The ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 is in West Indies. And due to the different time zones, all the matches are scheduled to begin after 7 pm India time. Which means almost everyone will be home, well in time to watch the matches on TV. This reduces the addressable market size, as there will be lesser number of people who would need to catch the action on-the-go because of office or travel.

So this time, mobile operators and VAS companies are at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the TV channels.

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