The Indian Premier League or IPL, the country’s most successful domestic sports event, has broken its exclusive deal with Google-owned Youtube and decided to partner with Bennet, Coleman & Company’s Indiatimes as well for the current season.
Google had managed a unexpectedly successful debut for the first live webcasting of any major sports event in India by tying up with IPL last year. The effort created several records, with more than 5 crore views of the channel. (India had only around 1 crore broadband connections at the time.)
This year, the IPL stream will be primarily an Indiatimes event, though Youtube will help Indiatimes transmit the signals on the web.
As a result, the feed will be available only on ipl.indiatimes.com and on the Indiatimes’ page on Youtube, instead of the earlier IPL page on Youtube.
“Under the terms of the agreement, Google will be a non-exclusive partner for IPL content for two years. Both Google and Indiatimes will seek to capitalize upon individual brand strengths and collaborate on monetization efforts both in India and rest of world markets,” Google said in a statement.
