ESPN Buys Cricket Website Cricinfo
By Rafat Ali - Sun 10 Jun 2007 11:39 PM PST
ESPN has made its biggest online foray into cricket: it has bought the largest cricket news and info website Cricinfo, from The Wisden Group. ESPN, owned by Disney, plans to keep the cricket site as a separate brand. No financial details were disclosed, but it has to be a significant acquisition monetarily.
The site started in 1993, as an online community of cricket fans supplying cricket-related information on a voluntary basis. After few years of independent existence, Cricinfo received its first major investment in 1999 from Indian tech company Sify, which acquired a majority stake in the company. It changed hands four years later when the Wisden Group, which then ran its own cricket website, Wisden.com, bought it. Wikipedia has a good history of the site and its evolution.
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