When North Americans think of cricket they usually think of genteel English stereotypes like milky tea, cucumber sandwiches and warm beer served in village pubs. The reality couldn’t be more different. Cricket is the second most followed sport in the world with a fan base of over two billion people. Its broadcasting rights command big bucks, nowhere more so than in India, its commercial home. So when Google-owned You Tube bought the global rights to this season’s Indian Premier League cricket it was a significant development in the relationship between sport and the Internet – almost the equivalent of the web taking over the Super Bowl.

The IPL’s deal with Google gives You Tube the exclusive online right to show two six-week seasons of 60 games in every country bar the United States. While its value wasn’t disclosed, The Guardian revealed that the IPL originally sold its Internet rights to Dubai-based netlinkblue for US$50m over 10 years. That deal excluded netlinkblue from showing live games in markets where TV deals had already been struck; Google’s doesn’t. It takes it head-to-head with television networks in some markets (such as India and the UK where Sony and ITV respectively own TV rights) and gives it the sole right to matches show in markets where TV deals haven’t been struck. Revenue generated by advertising, shown throughout each game, will be split equally between Google and the IPL.

That Google is investing so much time and energy in India and its national obsession with cricket is big news in itself (not least because it’s in the process of pulling out of China over the Chinese government’s refusal to waiver over censorship).  But even more important is the potential this deal has to overthrow the pre-eminent role television, whether free-to-air or cable, has had in showing live sport ever since the first baseball match was broadcast back in 1931. From now on the most important thing a sports fan can have may well be a high speed Internet connection and not a cable subscription.

And sport is only the start of it. There’s nothing at all to stop Google from taking on traditional TV in other genres too: networks need only to look to newspapers to see just how quickly the Internet can overthrow the established order.

Getting back to the cricket, I logged on to You Tube’s IPL channel to catch a few overs of the season’s opening match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Deccan Chargers. Nine hundred thousand other people had the same idea, causing You Tube’s coverage to crash. It seemed even the most viral of videos gets nowhere near the number of hits a live game of cricket does.

But by game 2, You Tube was prepared so I managed to catch most of the Delhi Daredevils beat my team, the Rajasthan Royals. Other than the video quality being a bit shaky at times, it was no different to watching the coverage on my TV screen – only, for my wife, it came with the added advantage of not being subjected to sport, as she kept control of the TV remote.

Still, what she missed was history in the making – even if it was a game of cricket half a world away.

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