Desi Galaxy

Indian Premier League is starting tomorrow April 18. This is India’s way to mix up sports with entertainment and generating lots of dollars. It is reported that the television rights to broadcast Indian Premier League cricket matches are sold out for more than a Billion Dollar. The franchises were bought for a total of $750 million. The marketing budget of the tournament exceeds $120 million.

Tomorrow Bangalore Royal Challengers and Kolkata Knight Riders will combat at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium Bangalore. Remember that Kolkatta Knight Riders is owned by Shahrukh Khan who will be accompanying his team. Most probably he will appear in the feild with bottles of water in his hands. The team is led by Saurav Ganguly and has batsmen like Ricky Ponting and Salman Butt. It is still unclear whether or not Shoaib Akhter the fastest bowler in the world would be playing for Kolkatta Knight Riders. Shoaib was banned to play cricket for five years by Pakistan Cricket board. However he is appearing before an applet tribunal and Shahrukh Khan is still hopeful that Shoaib will join the team.

Cricinfo and many other Cricket websites announced that they will not be covering the Indian Premier League after the IPL imposed insanely strict regulations on their rights to cover the matches. CricInfo presented their point of view on the website.

Our worst fears have come to pass. Cricinfo, and all other cricket websites, who serve millions of cricket fans, have been subjected to a crassly discriminatory set of regulations by the Indian Premier League that seek to severely undermine our ability to cover the event. Cricinfo’s journalists have been barred from entering the press box, and it has been made clear that agencies will not be able to sell us match pictures.

The Financial Express reports that Indian Premier League has declared peace with media. They had to do that. All these Cricket websites, blogs, portals and forums are actually very good for the publicity and further marketing of the IPL brand.