Live streams of town cricket tournaments, paid for by local sponsors
TL;DR Turfcast gives organisers of town and district cricket tournaments a phone-based broadcast kit and a viewer app. Families, players and fans watch the match live, and the bill is paid by local shops, coaching academies and dealers who buy ad slots shown only to viewers nearby. Organisers get a free stream and a share of sponsor money.
Amateur cricket in India is enormous and mostly unseen. One scoring app alone claims more than 10 million matches scored and 40 million users[1]. Yet a weekend tournament in a district town is usually watched by whoever stands at the boundary. Parents working elsewhere, relatives in other cities and players' friends all miss it.
If organisers stream at all then they rely on a volunteer with a phone on a video platform, which earns them nothing, or pay per match. The leading cricket-scoring app lists a full 50-over live stream at about ₹483 (US$4.99) on its US store[1]. Meanwhile the local businesses that already pay for the trophies and the banner get no measurable return.
The seed pictured a general geo-fenced video app for neighbourhoods. That fight against the big social video apps is unwinnable, and housing societies already run community apps[2]. So I narrowed it to one moment when a whole locality wants to watch the same thing - a local tournament.
The organiser gets two or three phones on tripods, a scoring overlay and a commentary audio input. Turfcast stitches the feed, adds the live score and pushes it to an app and a shareable link. Viewers join free. Every 15 minutes, and at each wicket or innings break, the stream runs a short slot from a sponsor within the viewers' radius, like the tyre shop, the coaching academy, the two-wheeler dealer. Sponsors see views and clicks per match, which a banner never gave them. Highlights clips go to players' phones after the game.
Football and kabaddi follow once cricket works in one district.
Viewers don't pay a rupee. The payer is a local business buying a season's slots across a tournament, sold by Turfcast or by the organiser for a revenue share. A second stream is organisers who want a premium broadcast with more cameras, paying per match as some already do on scoring apps[1]. Prices for local video sponsorship are not published, so the sprint has to find them.
Data has become cheap enough to watch a three-hour match on a phone. TRAI reports average use of 25.51 GB per subscriber a month in March 2026, with revenue per GB down to ₹8.02[3]. One network-equipment maker puts monthly use above 31 GB per user, driven partly by video[4]. Phone cameras now produce a watchable stream without broadcast gear.
Nobody publishes a figure for spending on amateur tournament streaming or on hyperlocal video ads in India. The best signal is volume - 10 million-plus matches scored on one app[1], and over 1,026 million wireless data subscribers[3]. Treat the sponsor budget per tournament as unknown until you test it.
The leading cricket-scoring app is the incumbent, with scoring, paid streaming and AI highlights[1], and it could add local ad sales at any time. Free live streaming on video platforms is familiar but gives organisers no sponsor tools. Society management apps cover community notices, not sport[2].
What's missing is selling and serving local sponsors, which is sales work a scoring app has not prioritised.
| Difficulty | Moderate (36/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹60 L–1.1 Cr |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The streaming stack is standard. The hard part is the field - shops in each town must be sold slots one by one, organisers must be trained, and streams must survive patchy ground-level networks on a Sunday afternoon, when every ground in the district is busy at once.
No broadcasting licence for streaming local matches online, but there's a set of rules to follow from launch.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI to judge what's safe to show on its own. Footage of minors and any flagged content needs a human check, and scores should come from the official scorer.
Want to work out the AI layer for Turfcast? Talk to Yash →
I'd test this if you can sell to small businesses in one district and actually enjoy ground operations. If you're a pure app builder then you'll struggle. Prove first that local sponsors in one town will pay at least ₹5,000 per tournament and renew for the next one.
Plan for roughly ₹60 L–1.1 Cr, much of it on field staff, organiser kits and selling slots to local shops.
No broadcast licence for streaming local games online. You need IT Rules compliance, consent for players on video and permission from each organiser and venue.
It can be if local sponsors pay and renew. Prove first that shops in one town pay at least ₹5,000 per tournament and come back for the next.
The free Turfcast validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the content and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for organisers and sponsors, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Turfcast or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting small-town sponsors to pay and renew, not the streaming tech, and that's where I can help. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.