Rob Moody’s heroics demands introspection on BCCI’s (lack of) effort in giving back to fans

Anirudh Suresh
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We all know Rob Moody. We all love Rob Moody. Perhaps, addressing Rob Moody as ‘Robelinda2’ would help people identify the person easier. To us, the fans, Robelinda2 is a literal god who has done more for cricket than a vast majority of the people associated with the sport ever have.

The YouTube channels Robelinda and Robelinda2 have footage from vintage cricket matches, spread across 2,700 videos, and it’s fair to say that there is no cricketing video library on the internet that remotely comes close to matching the quality and quantity that Rob’s channels provide. The nature of his uploads - him recording footage from the television and then uploading, which is not legal - means that there seldom goes by a day where is not slapped with a copyright infringement notice and a few days ago, Rob survived yet another scare as a copyright claim from Cricket Australia temporarily shut his Twitter account down; however, such is the reputation Rob has built for himself that within minutes, CA ‘retracted’ the copyright claim and even sent out a Tweet indirectly apologizing to Rob and his fans.

Prior to the pandemic, Rob appeared on  ‘The Grade Cricketer Podcast’ and revealed how his YouTube channel, thanks to the zillion copyright strikes, is constantly under the threat of being taken down; it is one of the primary reasons why he is constantly urging and encouraging his followers and subscribers to download all footage. To be honest, it is a miracle that Rob’s channel has survived strong till date.

But while we’re at it, while we’re celebrating and cherishing the existence of such an invaluable entity like Rob’s collection, it is also high time we question why we’re dependent on a person like Rob, who has no association to the sport whatsoever, other than the fact that he’s a die-hard fan, to feed us with content. It is high time we question why our beloved boards, who are so keen on ‘globalizing’ the sport and make it appeal to a wider, more casual audience, have taken absolutely no effort whatsoever to make footage of games more easily and readily accessible to the general public. 

Given the fact that it’d be a bit unfair to put all countries in the same bracket in this particular aspect, for some have done way, way more than the others, it’s safe to say that it’d be better if the elephant in the room is addressed without beating around the bush; of course, you guessed it right, I’m only interested here in taking a shot at the BCCI. And, to be fair, although a select few arguments might come off as biased, it might just be the need of the hour. 

Now, the BCCI are funny; they are really, really funny. They are the richest sporting authority in the world, they have at their disposal the most passionate, loyal and gargantuan fanbase in the entire planet yet they are so out of touch with the world of digital media that it beggars belief. Their Facebook is flooded with ‘Happy Birthday’ posts for cricketers, their Twitter is full of meaningless pictures and retweets that have borderline-cringeworthy captions, their YouTube is non-existent and their very own website, bcci.tv, is less lively than the good ol’ BSNL pages back in the 2010s. Here you have a giant organization with the biggest market in the world in their hands that has zero interest in doing the bare minimum to give something back to the fans and keep the supporters pleased for the solitary reason that they are not ‘obliged’ to do so, for they know these fans aren’t going anywhere. 

The 2010s saw the Star-BCCI duopoly come to fruition and while there have been plenty of positives - such as world-class production and coverage, meticulous insights and, of course, the introduction of Hotstar - an actuality that cannot be denied is the existing complexity and restrictions with respect to the availability of video content on the internet owned by these two parties. Make no mistake, when it comes to match streaming, coverage and stringing together highlights/snippets, Hotstar have done - and continue to do - an incredible job, but there seems to be little effort put into compiling together a world-class video library that would be invaluable to its consumers. 

The Star-BCCI partnership marked the beginning of the end of availability of Indian cricket content - or, rather, any form of cricket broadcast by the former - on YouTube - the IPL had a dedicated YouTube channel which was taken down after Star got the tournament rights - but what’s infuriating is the inability and incompetence of both parties to provide a viable, sustainable and efficient alternative. As of the moment, all video content owned by BCCI and Star are hosted on BCCI.TV and Hotstar.com yet the inefficiency of these websites’ supposed ‘search engines’ is flabbergasting. 

Not long ago, I decided to hop on to both these sites to look for Virat Kohli’s 81 in the second Test against England at Vizag in 2016. Generally, on YouTube, a simple “Virat Kohli 81” or “Virat Kohli 81 vs England” or “Virat Kohli 81 Vizag” search would have returned me the desired result. Yet here, none of these keywords seemed to work. While on BCCI.TV, the results that the site threw me were a bunch of Kohli knocks against the Windies earlier this year, on Hotstar, I was hit with the ‘nothing found’ prompt.

After five minutes of typing in different combinations of keywords, and after five minutes of not finding the desired result, I gave up. Of course, it is very much possible that I might have been the one at fault and it is very much possible that the video might have been lying somewhere in those two sites, but what’s the whole darn point of hosting videos on your site when you’re going to kill the buzz by making it a near-impossible task to retrieve the content?

This brings me to the main point: what is stopping both the Star and BCCI from hosting videos on YouTube? It is not a big ask. Forget about the thousands of hidden treasures that they’ve concealed, the least they can do is upload all the videos they ALREADY have on both Hotstar and BCCI.tv to Youtube. By doing so, not only will they unlock a whole new better, more efficient world for their fans to consume content, but they would also organically open an avenue to potentially make money through video monetization.

The sheer size of YouTube - which is the single biggest video-sharing platform on the internet with a total of 3 billion users (or, in other, words, 6.5 times as big as Hotstar) - would mean that the content would organically reach out to way more users than it would ever do if its hosted on bcci.tv (or) Hotstar, thus attracting a hefty number of people while also invoking interest and curiosity. In addition to this, the algorithm of YouTube would also make it way more easier for a common man to access these videos. And oh, we won’t have to then be dealing with the atrocity of a baseball player reacting to these supposed ‘best’ catches from an ECB montage as he could find no other legal video where he could ‘react’ to, without being served a copyright infringement notice. 

As fans, we are not demanding a lot. If BCCI and Star could put in 10% of the effort they spend in proactively hunting channels on YouTube to slap them with a copyright notice, instead, on giving something back to the supporters, we would have a lot more content up and available at our disposal. Their counterparts - be it CA, ECB, SLC or CWI - have been doing a wonderful job and are light years ahead of the BCCI in knowing the art of how to connect with fans; you can do all the Chahal TV’s you want, but at the end of the day, all the fans are looking for is a connection, and that is always achieved through nostalgia. 

What makes it frustrating is both BCCI and Star have ample resources at their disposal, yet have taken a conscious decision to not delve into the world of YouTube and instead just stick to ‘exclusivity’. Come to think of it, it is crazy that we are currently living in 2020 and yet have no access to the footage of Virender Sehwag’s 319 against South Africa, Sachin Tendulkar’s 103* against England and Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s 224 vs Australia, on the internet. They all exist in our minds as mere memories; who would have thought?

The more you think about it, the more frustrating it gets, but unfortunately, it is what it is. The ranting can go on and on but at the end of the day, the situation, if anything, is ought to get worse in the years to come. For now, though, all we can do is just be thankful for the good samaritans like Rob Moody and cherish their collection while we still have the opportunity to do so. 

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