In a cheering news for the cricket fans in Indian subcontinent, Facebook has bought digital streaming rights for cricket matches for a period of 4 years until 2023. On Thursday, the social networking giant, with over 400 million users in the subcontinent, announced that it has partnered with ICC (international cricket council). The financials of this partnership were not disclosed publicly.
Exclusive deal for users in the Indian Subcontinent
According to the agreement signed, Facebook will not be the official digital streaming partner for the ICC events and will broadcast post match recaps, in-play interesting moments and other featured content to the users in Indian subcontinent. Most of such content will be geographically limited to the subcontinent users and users outside will be able to access the post match recaps of the matches in ICC events, including ( Women’s T20 World Cup 2020, Men’s T20 World Cup 2020, Women’s Cricket World Cup 2021 & World Test Championship Final 2021.)
In a media statement, Ajit Mohan, Global VP and Facebook India director, stated, “with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, the ICC has an exceptional opportunity to leverage our family of apps to serve current sports fans as well as bring in an entirely new generation of fans. Every day, people come to our platforms to talk about, and form friendships around, cricket. With this partnership, we will be able to serve these fans with the kind of premium content that can ignite new conversations, new connections and new followership.”
This deal also comes at a time when Hotstar has been growing rapidly in India and other markets. In 2017, facebook and hotstar came face to face for bidding for the digital rights of IPL, however, Facebook lost the bid despite offering $600 Million yearly fee. Star India, the company which owns hotstar grabbed the rights. Another interesting fact is that Ajit Mohan, the current Facebook India managing director, was Hotstar’s CEO before beginning the current role.
The future of betting in India
Cricket in India has been blindly followed by hundreds of millions of fans. With the high speed internet penetration over the last 3 years since the introduction of Reliance Jio, majority of Indians today have access to smartphones with 4G network offering high speed downloads and uploads and that has opened new horizons for social media, content and other online activities. Experiencing live streaming on Facebook while sharing updates with friends will even encourage more activities like online betting where individuals can follow the game while being connected with friends throughout.
