IPL Cricket – Youtube missing a $$$ opportunity in the US market
so it was too good to be true when early reports suggested that Youtube would be live-streaming the 20-20 IPL cricket matches around the world … apparently the United States is not part of the ‘global deal’ and we here are left watching snippets of an already much shortened version of the classic game, wow. so i dug in a little deeper into this mystery of why viewers in the US cannot access the video streams and apparently (from what i could find at least) it boiled down to royalty and revenue sharing issues. well … here is my question to youtube and the IPL team … could you have not provided a pay per view option on youtube?
its funny that as much as social media and P2P content aggregation and distribution sites like youtube fret over the monetizing problem, they seem to miss the golden geese that literally fly into the San Bruno offices. now Google having paid $1.65 B for this asset should surely be smarter than missing a simple business opportunity here – lets see how the math adds up:
1) customers in the US have a willingness to pay for your service,
2) there is a large enough segment that can make a difference,
3) and most importantly you can gain a toehold and establish yourself as a leader in an ethnic niche broadcasting segment – afterall thousands of south asian in the US pay anywhere from $20 to $200 a month just to keep the cultural umblical cord connected …
i recognize this is not a billion $ segment but a region of the world that has hundreds of millions of its people on every country on planet, i would think they ought to think outside the proverbial box … come on google and youtube, you can do better, much better indeed. my back of the napkin math tells me you can get more revenue from this than from virtual gifts, virtual cows*, branded elements and even display ads. now i recognize there are ip, broadcast and a host of other issues but dont tell me that THE leader in online media cannot resolve this with a bunch of law-school grads.
folks @ youtube and google: if you need a soon-t0-be Kellogg MBA to come and give you fresh perspectives and lead the charge on monetizing south asian Web viewership, give me a call … seriously, i want to see IPL ‘live’ and will even pay for this live-streaming web content!
