Citations for the Willow TV Story
by Devanshu Mehta
My integrity is being questioned, so here is a partial list of sources for the Willow TV article:
- Willow TV was acquired by GCV in 2010: Reuters
- GCV had the rights to CLT20 and IPL: Reuters
- Elephant Capital invested in GCV, and pulled their investment out: DealCurry
- Elephant Capital pulled their investment out: Elephant Capital
- GCV sub-licensed the IPL rights from WSG: VC Circle
- WSG loses rights over improper facilitation fee: NDTV
- Lalit Modi is the father-in-law of Gaurav Burman: VC Circle
- Gaurav Burman is the director of Elephant Capital: Elephant Capital
- IPL rights went to Indiatimes: IndiaTimes
- All GCV onilne properties went silent: (at time of writing, all links here pointed to sites not updated for a few months): GCV
- BCCI and WSG go to court, court instructs to settle: NDTV
Deep Backward Point 
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Thanks so much for clarifying the WillowTV story. Pretty much as I had guessed, but nice to see the chapter-and-verse.
I, too, liked all the innovation (great video scorecard, for example), but , for me, the absence of live cricket post-WC from my DirecTV subscription has been the worst thing. And one consequence of that absence — I’ve hardly followed the IPL at all this year, after following it quite closely for the first three years. I’m probably not the typical WillowTV subscriber — another consequence is that I’ve just paid even more attention to the first two months of the County Cricket season — and intriguing they have been. Thank goodness for those BBC local radio webcasts (also under threat, btw). All the same, I have to think that not only has the IPL’s domestic audience declined (see recent article in Cricinfo), but that the disputes over rights have hurt its potentially large audience here in the States, too.
I think the IPL US audience must have been decimated compared to last year. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that ESPN seems to be taking cricket streaming in the US a little more seriously, so the rest will have to get their act together.
ESPN did a decent job of the Bangladesh/England series last winter (although, as with WTV, customer service could have been better, but there was one major difference — the ESPN streaming was _free_).
All the same, if WTV really is on its last legs, it will surely be a loss, _pace_ the blog posts I’ve seen elsewhere.
Somehow, cricket in America manages to shoot itself in the foot in so many different ways that it’s either a result of malign genius or…
Anyway, if there’s no England-Sri Lanka or England-India Tests on my TV this summer, I’ll be a seriously unhappy expat…
Spoke with the Willow TV CEO last week on the phone. He said they are definitely showing the two England series.
Great relief to see coverage of England v. Sri Lanka on Willow TV today, even if the quality left a bit to be desired (not widescreen, not HQ, feed from Star with loads of ads). Thanks for keeping on top of the story.
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