November 07, 2007	Wednesday	Shawwal 25, 1428

MUMBAI, Nov 6: The Indian cricket board has invited bids for designing and hosting its website for a period of four years.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the only ICC Full Member yet to have its own web portal.

In the bid, the board seeks to appoint a “reputed company of international standing” to acquire the web portal rights and the winning bidder will design, develop, host and operate the website from Jan 1, 2008 to Dec 31, 2011.

Bids can be made for a non-refundable amount of Rs5 lakh (US$12,725) between Nov 8 and Nov 17 after which the board’s marketing sub-committee will examine them.

According to the tender: “The project scope includes [but is not limited to]: 1. Exploiting existing content to create packages for driving subscription revenues, 2. Creating new content, 3. Hosting, production and ongoing operations of the portal, 4. Generating traffic, users and revenues to the site, 5. Maintaining the books of accounts and providing detailed information regarding all the revenues whenever requested by the BCCI management.”

In August last year, it was reported that software giants Microsoft and Wipro were competing for rights to BCCI’s web portal. The board instead approved Accenture’s bid for the portal. A website — bcci.tv — was launched the next month but apart from offering tickets online, it has little else.—Agencies