Reliance Big Entertainment buys majority stake in US-based cricket portal Willow TV

According to Rajesh Sawhney, president of Reliance Entertainment, the company will be paying between $60-70 million to purchase 75 percent stake in the California-based web company and expand the company's business operations.

The acquisition, Sawhney said, is part of Reliance ADA Group's "strategy to strengthen our presence in the global markets and reinforce our group's presence in new media."

"There is considerable scope to expand the size and scale of Willow TV portal," he said.

"We are very happy to be a part of the Reliance ADA Group and excited at the prospect of scaling up the business manifold. There is complete convergence of vision between Willow and Reliance Big Entertainment. The synergies from the ecosystem will enable us to offer a significantly superior product to our consumers across three screens: PC, Mobile and TV," said Vijay Srinivasan and Sameer Mehta, co-founders, Willow TV.

According to Sawhney, the group is using a three-pronged strategy to bring cricket, movies and telecommunication services to the Indians living in the US and elsewhere. "What we are looking to do is to create a triple play, using three passions that South Asians have," Sawhney said. "One is cricket, one is movies, and the third is communications, as they are the ones who call their families back home mostly."

"We are also looking at launching a Video-Box Service which will seamlessly integrate cricket, movie and television content on the television screen which would give our audience great choice and enhanced viewing experience. There is a considerable synergy between cricket from Willow TV, movies from Bigflix.com, and telecom services from Reliance Communications which will be now ignited," he said.

Reliance ADA Group has already made inroads in the US through its network of 250 theaters operating under the name Adlabs, and its movie rental and movie download service BigFlix. It has also planned a joint venture with Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks SKG team. The company has also partnered with production houses run by Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage, George Clooney, Jim Carrey and other Hollywood stars for development and co-financing of some of the film projects as well as securing the Indian distribution rights.

In April this year, Reliance Entertainment made its first overseas foray in the digital service space by acquiring the digital images business of US-based DTS Inc. for an undisclosed amount. The American firm's business DTS Digital Images (DDI), also known as Lowry Digital Images, offers services in digital restoration and enhancement of moving pictures and makes use of proprietary tools and algorithms.

DDI counts Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, MGM and 20th Century Fox, among others, as its clients.

Willow TV, with over one million registered users, is the world's largest cricket portal that offers live streaming video of cricket matches to cricket fans for fees ranging anywhere from between $10 for a short series to $150 a full cricket tournament, depending on the countries and number of games involved. It has an office in Bangalore, India.

According to industry analysts, Willow TV competes with bigger rival Cricinfo, a top ranked cricket website that was acquired last year by leading sports broadcaster ESPN from the Wisden Group for an undisclosed sum.

Launched in 1993, Cricinfo began as an online community of cricket fans supplying cricket-related information on a voluntary basis.

Beginning with scorecards and live scores, the portal pioneered audio and video streaming of cricket matches.

Boasting of a traffic of 7 million unique visitors per month, the website now reaches beyond the internet so that cricket fans can get Cricinfo content on mobile applications and on some of the world's leading internet portals.

ABOUT RELIANCE ENTERTAINMENT

As part of the Reliance ADA Group, Reliance Entertainment is spearheading the group's foray into the media and entertainment space. Reliance Entertainment's core focus is to build significant presence for Reliance in the entertainment eco-system across content and distribution platforms.

The key content initiative are across movies, music, sports, gaming, internet and mobile portals, leading to direct opportunities in delivery across the emerging digital distribution platforms: digital cinema, IPTV, DTH and Mobile TV.

Reliance Entertainment first caught the media's attention when it acquired Adlabs Films Ltd in 2005, one of the largest entertainment companies in India having interests in film processing, production, exhibition and digital cinema.

Presently, it is also the owner of a private FM network as well as a social networking site called Bigadda.com and a gaming portal called Zapak.com.