Disney ESPN acquires Cricinfo cricket portal

Walt Disney Co’s ESPN division has announced that they are acquiring the cricket portal Cricinfo. Cricinfo happens to be the web’s largest specialized cricket related website and is hugely popular in the Indian subcontinent.

This acquisition shows that ESPN wants to expand beyond their existing domains related to American football, basketball, baseball and Nascar.

ESPN is acquiring Cricinfo from UK-based Wisden Group.

Russell Wolff, ESPN International executive vice president and managing director spoke about this new development: “We don’t think of ourselves as an American sports television company. We think of ourselves as a large sports and media entertainment company that operates around the world. Cricket is growing in popularity inside the United States among a growing south Asian expatriate population.”

Disney’s Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs added: “Since we are a content company one of the things we are trying to make sure is that we have got vibrant content, creation engines around the company.”

Incidentally, ESPN is also launching a new Cricket specific sports television channel aimed at the massive fan following in the Indian Subcontinent.

Checkout: ESPN | Cricinfo

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