Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. will broadcast a major global sport on YouTube for the first time with the third season of the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket tournament.
All 60 matches of the tournament that begins March 12 and goes on for 45 days will be streamed on the YouTube video site with a five minute delay from the television broadcast, IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi said at a press conference in Mumbai today. The IPL includes a team owned by Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man.
“The partnership will boost the reach of the game to the entire world, which at present is mostly limited to cricket- playing nations,” Modi said. “It will offer viewers a different way to look at the game.”
Google, owner of the world’s most-popular Internet search engine, has exclusive rights to broadcast the matches for two years and has the option to extend the contract, Shailesh Rao, managing director at Google India, said at the conference. Streaming IPL on YouTube is a first for Google, which gets an average 10 million visitors a day in India, he said. Google and IPL will share revenue from sponsorships and advertising, the two said in a statement.
Mountain View, California-based Google is expanding in India, the world’s second-most populous nation, as it threatens to end operations in neighboring China over “highly sophisticated” cyber attacks last month that it says originated from that country.
Twenty20 is a three-hour version of the game of cricket.