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Can't blame ECB for taking Sky's money
I was under the impression the current four year deal was worth £150mn but it seems that figure is some way off the mark. The actual value of the existing deal is worth £280mn. That's a lot of money so I can't say I can blame them.
If terrestrial stations were to offer £250mn then the board would be crazy not to take it. It would be a good compromise between somewhat less money but higher viewing figures. I think a station like Channel 5 would do well to snap up the rights. It would deliver them good ratings during daytime and excellent figures during the bigger series e.g. the Ashes. They would also get excellent figures for T20 internationals, the domestic T20 if it were to be a summer only tournament. The station would also get high value advertisers since cricket in the UK tends to have strong fan base among the higher income groups. Reading another thread, apparently Channel 5 paid £300mn for Neighbours, which is an insane amount for a show that has been on big decline for years.
However, I expect only Sky and BT to fight for the rights when it comes up for renewal for all England's matches and key domestic action. This could push the value to in excess of 300mn.
If terrestrial stations were to offer £250mn then the board would be crazy not to take it. It would be a good compromise between somewhat less money but higher viewing figures. I think a station like Channel 5 would do well to snap up the rights. It would deliver them good ratings during daytime and excellent figures during the bigger series e.g. the Ashes. They would also get excellent figures for T20 internationals, the domestic T20 if it were to be a summer only tournament. The station would also get high value advertisers since cricket in the UK tends to have strong fan base among the higher income groups. Reading another thread, apparently Channel 5 paid £300mn for Neighbours, which is an insane amount for a show that has been on big decline for years.
However, I expect only Sky and BT to fight for the rights when it comes up for renewal for all England's matches and key domestic action. This could push the value to in excess of 300mn.
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Personally, England doesn't bother me one bit, I want a channel to cover Lancashire!! But seeing as that won't happen, it would be interesting if BT could share coverage of international and the county game with a FTA station, as I doubt Sky ever would by choice?
Moving to BT is the next best thing to having it free to air, so long as the coverage is professionally done. BT could potentially have many millions of broadband customers with free access to their sports channels.
I think they will better the current deal. They need to be clever and start negotiating early and really sell themselves to pay TV as well terrestrial, perhaps even sell different packages, like at least a good two years before the existing deal is due expiration. The thing about cricket is because it runs for several hours you don't always get an accurate picture of how many people are watching. The number of people viewing a test match, ODI is higher than raw figures show. That's because people drift in and out of a cricket match. You also get different people watching different passages of play. Cricket also gets very high ratings from the UK on various cricket sites on the web. The radio figures during the 2013 Ashes series both on radio and the radio app on the BBC site generated massive interest. I always think cricket undersells itself in this country. But then again, the £280mn, or even if it was around £250mn, over four years, is pretty good.
Take the Sky money. If it works out then you have the Rugby League situation (game financed by Sky, just about surviving). If it doesn't you have UK Ice Hockey Superleague (Sky pulled the plug, the league collapsed)
I think it may surprise in how popular it would be
I think rugby union is a good comparison, a sport with a similiar profile to cricket, but one that has been cannier in spreading its TV rights around.
To try and make a straight comparison, I'm comparing coverage of English international and domestic teams, so we are not looking at things like Welsh rugby or the IPL that are out of the control of ECB/RFU
England Cricket
Sky: All live England and county matches, World cup
C5: Highlights of England home matches, sporadic highlights of overseas.
England Rugby
Sky: Autumn Internationals, Summer tours, half of Euro Championship
BBC: All Six nations games
BT: English premiership, half of Euro Championship
ITV: Highlights of English premiership, World cup(?)
Cricket meanwhile is 95% on one broadcaster, if you don't have SKy it may not fall on your radar at all. This makes it harder to turn a non-fan into a casual fan, or a casual fan into an avid fan.
Cricket need Sky more than Sky need cricket. The money Sky pump into the game helps the ECB and the counties enormously. Would you rather sacrifice that for it on a platform more will see ( if terrestrial ) or significantly less will see ( if BT Sport ) ??
Well, not unless they could get it for next to nothing and hence make it cheaper than daytime chat shows and repeats of property and cooking programmes.
The writing was on the wall when the BBC started leaving the cricket for news, weather and sports bulletins......
Even Channel 4 put The Ashes on More 4/E4 when they had racing on Channel 4
Not a chance. Cricket dominates the schedules through the summer when there is no football on.
Which to go over old ground was at least made free to all and often came commercial break free. It wasn't that bad a solution (and whatever way you cut it anyone who can watch the cricket on sky sports can watch it on More 4).
That isnt the point i was making. The point is that C4 didnt even see it as important as horse racing where as Sky always give their sports priority. I am a huge sports fan, i watch most sports and i do not begrudge paying money to Sky for it because they do it so well, so well.
This is another of those threads which is just a moan at having to pay to watch sport so lets try and get it on somewhere cheaper. Fair enough but nobody can criticise Sky for the coverage they give to sports.
Fair point, and certainly can't critisise the depth and volume of coverage sky give to cricket (even if stylistically I prefer C4/C9 cricket coverage). Sky do treat all their sports as a priority I grant you though I still don't fully understand why cutting away for a race means and putting cricket on a different channel means they're not prioritising it. The races lasted a few minutes, whereas C4 had hours of coverage of racing over the test matches.
Nonetheless, I fully agree with you overall that cricket needs sky. It would be in a shocking financial state now if sky pulled out.
They put it on the old Film Four channel which wasn't on freeview, as opposed to Film4 which is.
More4 didn't even exist until late 05. And I'm pretty sure it was never on E4 (where would be the room given all the 'Friends' repeats).
And the freeview channel Film4 didn't even exist until 2006.
You had to have Satellite or cable, not a freeview box, to watch cricket free on Film Four - you didn't have to have a subscription to Film Four.
So I was effectively paying Sky to watch Channel 4's coverage?
The analogue signal was still in existence.
When the BBC had it, there was no red button.
Suppose the BBC had the cricket; they could show it live during the daytime and then put it behind the red button if there was a clash, if play overran.
Or Channel 4 could switch to a freeview channel so its precious Simpsons repeats weren't delayed (they never showed it on E4).
You can criticise Sky. Yes, they give good coverage of England matches and they pay a lot to get the rights. The downside is what it has cost cricket. The audience, player base and general awareness has decreased and the county game is just about dead and bankrupt.
Yes as far as the BBC are concerned, having dominated coverage for half a century, I haven't detected even the remotest inkling of interest since they lost the rights-even as an aspiration. I get the impression that the modern view is that Cricket is awkward to schedule amongst all their other commitments and not a short or long term priority.
Its a strange world where SKY can pay such huge sums for only the few cherries that Cricket throws up audience wise and the remainder is effectively channel filler. It seems to me that UK Cricket has been enormously fortunate in financial aspect-but the downside is that as year follows year, the sport becomes ever more a bit player in the nations summer radar.
How is that Sky's fault? It's the ECB's fault.
without SKY's money the county game wouldn't be "just about dead and bankrupt" , it would have passed that point a few years ago
It is dangerous situation when most channels don't even want highlights shows because of the restrictions placed on them by ECB.
Also Sky did help ECB by giving them more funding in all areas, better coverage of the games.
The next rights deal will be very interesting since ECB clearly wants two broadcasters and FTA coverage but the question is how much will it be worth and will BT Sports bid for the rights, will any FTA channel actually even want the rights even if they only get T20 games and the Ashes.
Although I don't believe the rights value will drop if ECB does a split deal in this auction since BT presence will make sure Sky always bid high or same amount in the blind auction even if they don't get exclusive coverage they would have probably paid enough for the value to be close to last amount or even higher.
I can't help but think this is yet again, along the same ECB corporate line of wanting to bash the county scene big time so that only a few teams get to have the ECB Sky 'charity' cash lifeline.
The sad thing is that more and more, the ECB appear to go of their way to treat counties as excess baggage by purposely holding back the stars and playing too many England games.
Rather ominously they also imposed a 10% reduction on county spending to below £2 million for 2015. There will be fewer foreign stars in the county game on top of the England players near always withheld. From what I gather, this reduction allows the ECB to pay their England players more.
It is rather ominous when you start to consider what County Cricket will look like in 20/30 years time. The relationship between national and county teams is peculiar-starkly pointed out by the instant furore over even the hint of the England Football team having to play the World Cup in Nov/Dec all of seven years away. You would have to change reality for a central contract to exist in English Football to the detriment of the clubs, yet in Cricket the status quo is that the games biggest home grown stars hardly ever touch base with what is the major league.
I think in the nether regions of the ECB there is now a feeling that there are too many first class counties for any money spinning future super structure to exist. A much reduced domestic calendar might allow the "stars" to participate more-and maybe the mooted Big Bash style franchise. However its not easy to make anything small or different when you have eighteen teams having to play each other. Personally I fear for some counties continued first class status-or indeed viable future altogether.
EDIT: Aghast reaction from the ECB that potential ideas were apparently leaked to the press
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/cricket/ecb-chairman-colin-graves-saddened-8735363
An 18 county scene is not a lot for the population size of the country. Some renaming might help things a bit though.