If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
The Cricket World Cup 2007 is less than three weeks away and I am again stuck in a land which doesn’t know what cricket is all about let alone having primetime programming available. Even football (no soccer, mind you!) which is popular all over the world has a difficult time attracting fans and eyeballs in the U.S. Importing Beckham had a flicker of interest in the news media which expectedly focused more on his flamboyant hair and celebrity Posh Spice wife. Anyway, it is time again to scour the web for online webcast cricket options at least to see the important games. Also, it doesn’t help that the majority of important games will be played when things will be at its craziest best unlike last year’s football world. I promise not to indulge in sending you on any wild goose chases [pity that people still get suckered in each time a cricket match is on].
First of all, make sure you are aware of the schedule. The World Cup spans more than a month and with a host of little league teams you don’t want to waste precious bandwidth on such games. But with sporadic antics from Kenya or Bangladesh, you never know. If it helps, the Super 8 stage only starts on March 27 with the final slated more than a month later on April 28. I feel for the loss of productivity in India at that time; we must make cricket popular in China if we have any hope of competing against them economically.
If you are rich enough, you better opt for Dish Network’s World Cup package for $199 which in my opinion is a steal considering that the last time the world cup was around, it was close to $300. But trust me, if you wait until after the preliminary stages, they might offer a rest-of-the-World-Cup packages for at least $50-75 less. If enough of you are interested, do what our apartment did last World Cup. Buy the package and ask your friends to chip in. The only problem is you have to host the game parties. We had 35 people for the final and might have made a profit if we wanted to. Of course everyone lost interest once Australia was done batting and Sachin got out in the first over.
Ok! no money and no interest in begging your friends to chip in, go to the next step - online streaming television or webcasts. Mind you, plenty of sites purport to offer such service but hardly any do. Don’t bother going to Desi Cricket Live which worked fine then but now is a link farm with spammy Google Ads.
Cricket Next has reportedly bought rights to webcast the World Cup globally. But no details are available right now on pricing or platform compatibility. But you can be sure that so many people hitting their servers, they might just buckle down at crucial moments. They have a tab in the second column [from the right] where it says live matches. They have a blogs section, forums, and even videos but I don’t see a webcast tab yet.
A simulation of cricketing action powered by Flash might not be the real things but close if you have no other options. ESPN Star simulates ball-by-ball action in their Live Off Tube [Live Flash Cricket Centre]. But now for the real stuff:
I assume Sony SET MAX [and Doordarshan, of course] is telecasting the matches in Asia/India and is sub-licensing the rights outside Asia to Star Sports. So any online streaming service that has Star Sports in its channel lineup will possible have cricket. I’ll point you to my earlier post on streaming television channels via the TVU Player. It worked perfectly fine for the football world cup and if the matches are shown on the same channels which include ESPN, ESPN, Star Sports, etc. You can see the detailed instructions I listed to download and run the TVU Player.
I chanced upon another streaming player, Sopcast which also acts like the TVU Player [via]. Sopcast streamed Star Sports without any problem. Of course, you need a fast Internet connection and little patience to let the stream buffer first. You have to be aware that such streaming channels may not be entirely legal so download and watch at your own risk.
Other streaming television sites are Channelking and Streamick. The first one mostly has American channels and may not have cricket but Streamick has ESPNStarsports, Fox Soccer Channel, and UK-based Sky Sports News. The video quality is not great though. But keep an eye out on these channels anyway.
Note of caution - don’t try to stream from all sites at once. You may just slow it down for all channels.
I hope this helped. I’ll update the post if I find any other options for streaming television or webcast for the World Cup. Let me know in the comments if you have any other sites/services that you rely on.
Quicklinks:
Dish Network’s World Cup Package - $199
ESPN-Star Simulated Flash Graphics
TVU Networks Player [instructions]
Sopcast
Streamick
Channelking
Update#1: Chetan has found an ideal deal in Europe. But it comes at a hefty price of 325 euros. But this deal is for conventional TV.
Update#2: Thanks to Andrew, I found LiveSportson.TV (smart use of the dot TV suffix). It seems to work fine and the upside is that we can pay-per-match. However, the downside is that, it costs $159 for the entire World Cup and $15 per match. Considering that Dish Network is only slightly more expensive at $199, I would prefer conventional television (can’t trust overburdened servers, right?). But if you are a casual follower, then buying a choice few matches is a better option. Better hope the video doesn’t freeze at a crucial moment.
by Patrix | on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 12:00 pm | 
Recommended, Sports, Technology, Television . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
February 21st, 2007 at 1:57 pm reply
Hmm… I’m sure there will be a workaround. I dont miss any of the La Liga or EPL matches (that Man utd play) thanks to SopCast. I also had the good fortune of watching New Zealand chase down Australia recently… my circle of friends (and me of course!) seem successful at finding links. Hopefully that lasts during the world cup too.
February 21st, 2007 at 2:17 pm reply
Piker, that’s cool. During the football WC, TVU was sufficient for me. Let me know if you come across any more links. Will add them to the list.
February 23rd, 2007 at 9:01 pm reply
Patrix,
Thanks for suggesting the various options. The monopoly broadcaster in Singapore is offering a package for S$105 (approx USD 70).This is about twice the price of their package for the previous world cup. I guess conventional TV is more cheaper on a whole package basis. However, if people want to view only certain matches, Pay Per View over the internet is going to be the option.
February 24th, 2007 at 10:13 am reply
Kaps, the various cricket packages in the US are quite expensive as compared to what you are getting in Singapore. I too prefer the conventional TV in such cases as quality and reliability over webcasts is still a problem. But streaming sites still can make a killing if they offer cheaper options as compared to conventional TV packages.
February 25th, 2007 at 8:22 pm reply
[...] Update: If you are here for the 2007 Cricket World Cup, you might want to check out these online telecast/webcast options. [...]
February 27th, 2007 at 11:23 am reply
[...] Update: If you came here looking for the Cricket World Cup streaming options, you might want to check out my recent post. [...]
March 1st, 2007 at 1:35 pm reply
I used Livecricketon.tv for the ashes and it was pretty good. Had access 99% of the time and the quality was pretty good. http://www.livesportson.tv/index.asp
March 1st, 2007 at 3:19 pm reply
Hi,
Just checked out Livecricketon.tv and it looks good, good part is they have pay-per-match option which is better than “dish”ing out $200 when we cant watch all games. Is it reliable? and as good as sample video they show?
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:28 am reply
i could not find a free source for cricket streaming rather found
Live cricket score and commentary and successfully enjoyed the score and audio but will love to watch it online
March 3rd, 2007 at 12:13 am reply
i also found a cool source by the name of Watch Live cricket
its neat also they send some p2p information once you maiul them
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:35 am reply
hi i like to watch world cup circket 2007 live if u have live link then help me thx
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:36 am reply
Hi,
I looked around, but settled for the ARY Digital package for 2months. Its called the world cup special. Comes for 100Euros. This is for people in Europe.
I personally felt cricket is better on TV rather than the internet [unless I get free and reliable links].
Hope this does good to someone.
Lucks
Manoj
March 3rd, 2007 at 10:57 pm reply
hey guys, just wanted to share something cool with you guys!! there is this Device called SLING BOX… in my case i ended up sending one to my Counsins back in UK,they hooked it up to their TV and then networked it. Now, i can watch pretty much all the Channels that are offered in United Kingdom And also those same Channels Include Cricket As well. Sling BoX is about 149 dollars . Hi-Def one can go up to 250 or so but regular one will do it. You can watch matches in the best quality Via Your computer. Alright Guyss.. just a tip have fun
yeah And GO PAKISTAN ALL THEY WAY ! I DOUBT IT :)
March 6th, 2007 at 11:42 am reply
Cool, Thanks for the information
March 6th, 2007 at 1:59 pm reply
hey Zain, any way anyone else can tap into the feed you are recieving from the Sling Box? not too sure if this is possible but perhaps convert the feed into a channel on sopcast???
March 8th, 2007 at 9:58 am reply
Yeah, please share your slingbox connection…
March 9th, 2007 at 12:28 am reply
try this site ..i bought every series from him since champions trophy ..works well…the price is only $50.
http://www.cricketspot.com
March 9th, 2007 at 12:47 am reply
Nice summary of available broadcasters:
http://cricketworldcup.indya.com/event/broadcaster.htm
March 10th, 2007 at 4:13 pm reply
This is really strange and frustrating. There is sopcast, tvu, freetube - they cover all the sports in the world you can name … poker,sailing and what not. Only Cricket is missing..
March 10th, 2007 at 7:11 pm reply
There are many website streaming online cricket for the coming Cricket World Cup and list of all the websites can be found on this blog site:
There are following ways that you can watch World Cup Cricket on Internet.
1) Through FREE streaming hosts listed on the above site. However the quality of the feed is not good.
2) Through P2P players like SOPCast but again quality is not good.
3) Paid subscriptions to legal TV sources etc.
March 10th, 2007 at 11:30 pm reply
Graet cricket site with new links added all the time. Check it out
March 11th, 2007 at 1:15 am reply
THANK YOU PATRIX FOR THE GREAT INFORMATION ON LIVE STREAMING
March 11th, 2007 at 1:22 pm reply
hi guys, iam hoping to spend some cash in having the world cup seen on ma pc, please suggest a relaible source , must be streaming and live..
would be great and i really appreciate it .
cheers.,
March 11th, 2007 at 4:37 pm reply
hey guyyz..hope u gonna love this site. You can watch all the highlights day after the match. have fun guyz see u in next worldcup again:d.
March 12th, 2007 at 3:00 pm reply
[...] be a rich online experience although many websites could have done a far better job. My previous compilation of options to watch the World Cup online has been attracting a fair bit of attention so I can vouch for the interest. Except I see a serious [...]
March 13th, 2007 at 1:46 am reply
The ultimate site for Cricket streaming links is
http://live-cricket-streaming-worldcup.blogspot.com/
The site is a life saver for Cricket lovers across the world :)
March 13th, 2007 at 8:29 am reply
[...] If you are here for the Cricket World Cup 2007, you might like to check out the Live Streaming Options that I have listed recently. The site linked below no longer [...]
March 13th, 2007 at 8:29 am reply
[...] is your best bet at getting quality legal web streaming with several other options on the fringe of legality. Apart from the online options, you can always buy the satellite packages [...]
March 13th, 2007 at 10:55 am reply
hi so bestttttt
March 13th, 2007 at 3:53 pm reply
Hi
anyone know of a “good” quality video feed for the world cup? Tried a few but not that good.
Thanks
Ian
http://www.gothenburgcc.com
March 13th, 2007 at 3:54 pm reply
By the way, I am watching the cricket Sweden if that makes
Thanks
Ian