JioStar, which is a joint venture of Reliance Industries and The Walt Disney Company, yesterday announced that ESPNcricinfo will be rebranded as Cricinfo. The rebranding of the world’s leading cricket website is a key step in the operational transition, following the terms agreed as part of the merger between the two companies in India in November 2024.

The name change, according to a press release from JioStar yesterday, takes Cricinfo back to its original identity when it was founded in 1993. The platform will continue to be the most-trusted and deeply engaged cricket destination in the world and will play a distinctive role in consumers’ experience of JioStar’s world-class cricket presentation.

For the unversed, Disney company ESPN acquired Cricinfo from the Wisden Group in June 2007. Following the acquisition, the pioneering cricket website was rebranded as ESPNcricinfo. The site operates as a dedicated sports news website for cricket.

“We will continue building Cricinfo as a definitive destination for the most passionate cricket fans globally and it will remain true to its founding principles of serving cricket fans everywhere. The next phase of evolution will include AI-powered innovations to enhance our story-telling, which, as ever, will stay rooted in originality,” said Cricinfo Editor-in-Chief Sambit Bal.

The product will now be available at cricinfo.com and across mobile apps as ‘Cricinfo’ on App Store and Google Play. Users accessing the site via espncricinfo.com or existing bookmarks and links will continue to be directed to the site without interruption, the release added.

With over three decades of editorial heritage and one of the most comprehensive cricket databases ever built, Cricinfo remains the definitive record of the sport.

According to Wikipedia, launched in March 1993 by a British researcher at the University of Minnesota, Simon King, Cricinfo interestingly started as a bot. It was originally conceived as a basic scorecard platform, but evolved into the world’s premier digital destination for cricket news, live ball-by-ball commentary, and historical statistics.