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

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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?