The Wisden Group was a group of companies formed by John Wisden & Co Ltd, publishers of ''

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

''. As well as John Wisden & Co, the group included the magazine ''

The Wisden Cricketer ''The Wisden Cricketer'' was the world's best-selling monthly cricket magazine. It was created in 2003 by a merger between ''The Cricketer'' magazine and ''Wisden Cricket Monthly''. It is now no longer connected to Wisden and is called ''The Cric ...

'',

Cricinfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

– the world's highest traffic cricket website – and the

Hawk-Eye Hawk-Eye is a computer vision system used in numerous sports such as cricket, tennis, Gaelic football, badminton, hurling, rugby union, association football and volleyball, to visually track the trajectory of the ball and display a profile o ...

computerised ball-tracking system, which is used by the media in cricket, tennis and other sports. The group also owned ''

The Oldie ''The Oldie'' is a British monthly magazine written for older people "as a light-hearted alternative to a press obsessed with youth and celebrity", according to its website. The magazine was launched in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, who was its edi ...

'', a general interest British magazine aimed at older readers. Sir John Paul Getty was chairman of John Wisden & Co from 1993 until his death in 2003, when he was succeeded as majority shareholder by his son

Mark Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Fi ...

.''The Insider: Mark Getty''
by Mark Getty (May 8, 2005, ''Guardian Unlimited'') The group was broken up in 2007 when ''The Wisden Cricketer'' was sold to British Sky Broadcasting, ''The Oldie'' was sold to a group of investors led by the magazine's former business manager, James Pembroke, and Cricinfo was sold to

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

. John Wisden & Co was sold to

A & C Black A & C Black is a British book publishing company, owned since 2002 by Bloomsbury Publishing. The company is noted for publishing '' Who's Who'' since 1849. It also published popular travel guides and novels. History The firm was founded in 18 ...

in 2008. Hawk-Eye remained under the control of Mark Getty, but was eventually sold to

Sony Corporation , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

in 2011.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official site
(archive, 2006) Defunct mass media companies of the United Kingdom Sports mass media in the United Kingdom Wisden