Yahoo hits a sixer, ties up with ICC

MUMBAI, INDIA: Yahoo India, the leading global Internet search engine and International Cricket Council (ICC) – the global cricket governing body, announced a three year partnership in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Under the three year deal, the online giant will have access to exclusive contents such as images, videos, interviews and player chats around all major ICC events including the ICC World Cup, ICC Twenty20 tourney and Champions Trophy.

Using the Internet platform along with ICC’s exclusive content, Yahoo will make the game accessible to millions of cricket lovers. However, details on the deal announcement were not disclosed to the media.

On this occasion, ICC’s chief executive Haroon Lorgat said, “I am happy to announce the three-year agreement with Yahoo and the site has hosted a special page for ICC events (iccevents.yahoo.com) that offers images, rankings, archives and other exclusive content.

“We are committed to a vibrant partner like Yahoo. And ICC has set a new bench mark for innovation and user interaction with this new partnership with Yahoo,” Lorgat added.

Following the announcement, Rahul Dravid, the former captain of Indian cricket team, unveiled the new global cricket website – cricket.yahoo.com at the event.

The new site will be a one-stop destination on the history of cricket, updates on ongoing cricket tourneys and players statistics along complete resource on the game with updates, images, match schedules and player profiles.

“Yahoo ICC tie-up will go a long way in promoting the game. This reach out to audience with the online medium will help in promoting the game in India and all over the world,” Dravid said.

Gopal Krishna, vice president and head of Audience, Emerging Markets, Yahoo said, “What a tremendous moment for Yahoo, Yahoo India and ICC as about 500 million users globally will have unparallel experience on Yahoo.”

On the issue of content’s intellectual property (IP) rights, Gopal Krishna said there is different right for every match played for - broadcasters, print medium and so forth.

“The deal covers online/Internet content like images, videos or snippets which will be only the official legal content of ICC. Even, we have exclusive right for mobile based WAP content,” he told Cyber Media News.

Moreover, Yahoo also plans to offer exclusive access to players during the match, where the users can interact with players. But, such modules are still in development stage and work is in progress, added Krishna.

However, Krishna categorically said that Yahoo will not offer any live streaming but the users can view the replay or view exclusive videos or snippets, images and contents.