You know, there are some people that say that the trading card industry is down…well, they’re right, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t keep trying new things to bring revenue in the door.

Its probably with that mind set that Topps Trading Cards entered into a deal with the Indian Premier League (IPL) to produce all things related to cricket collectibles in 2011.

Topps will produce stickers, albums and trading cards that will be sold both at retail and online. A substantial marketing campaign is planned that includes television and sampling initiatives as well as a nationwide “Game Play demonstration tour” to help children learn how to play and swap their IPL collectibles.

“This alliance with Topps – the world leader in collectibles, is part of our effort to actively engage IPL fans across multiple platforms,” said Sundar Raman the IPL’s Chief Operating Officer. “Collectable trading cards are an integral part of any fan experience globally and through this partnership we are happy to introduce Indian fans to this unique and exciting global concept.” (via Beckett Blog)

“A substantial marketing campaign is planned that includes television and sampling initiatives as well as a nationwide “Game Play demonstration tour” to help children learn how to play and swap their IPL collectibles.”

Its an interesting concept.  The trading card market in America is bad, so Topps is essentially building a trading card market from scratch over in India.  Granted, I have no clue how popular cricket collectibles are or will be, but you obviously have a strong interest in the sport so it doesn’t seem like a transition from watching cricket to collecting cricket collectibles is a far stretch.

This by no means is Topps first foray into foreign markets, just its most recent; they already have trading cards with Germany’s Bundesliga football and Italy’s Serie A football, among others.

Flying Cars. Teleportation. The end of network television.

So…which one of these is most likely?  I’m not sure, myself, but it seems like network television may be in the process of taking another major hit.  This time?  Its in the form of the web-based live sports broadcast.  The sport? cricket.

YouTube has announced an exclusive deal to broadcast live online the entire cricket season of the upstart Indian Premier League this year. “[This is] the largest and most extensive live streaming that we’ve ever done, I think that’s ever been done on the internet before,” Shailesh Rao, Managing Director, Google India said yesterday. The season will be shown everywhere around the world except inside the United States. (via NYT)

As the article goes on to mention, there have been some other events broadcast live on You Tube previously (i.e. U.S. presidential inauguration), but they were one time special events.  Broadcasting the Indian Premier League could be the beginning of a huge shift from the network broadcasting of sports to the seemingly more versatile internet.  The hurdle of making money has already been cleared (namely advertising during videos), the infrastructure (YouTube, and others) is already in place, and most importantly the larger scaled infrastructure that surrounds network television (networks having their shows broadcast by affiliate networks to the consumer; a top down approach) is in danger of being replaced by the ever growing world of user based content.

Sure, if you are the NFL or MLB you’d much rather have the top-down approach; there’s much more money to be made.  But, if the network television model erodes such that its no longer the premium model or format choice (see: NBC network programming over the last 6 months or various entities attempts to create web-based only television shows) then how can the sports networks justify continuing the current course of action?  A factory could make more money producing a plastic pipe over a copper pipe…but if no one is using copper pipes, why would they keep making them?

The live broadcast of the Indian Premier League may be media’s first step towards those “plastic pipes”.