The cricket or the coverage?

PSL is also streaming Live on youtube at rthe moment (picture quality isn't too bad on my TV )

Any announcement on the County games on Sky tv yet ?

the picture

Nothing as yet, website only goes up to the end of March

http://www.skysports.com/watch/cricket-on-sky

PSL is a pretty poor competition - don't think any of the other T20 competitions in the world have anything to fear

Reading on here that the PDC have created a tournament (Darts) especially for the BBC. Growing the game.
Why can't the ECB do that? Do we need Barry Hearn?

Not quite, the PDC has created a new tournament and the BBC have the got the rights for it. Although admittedly they probably got them quite favorably as Hearn has stated for a while he would like to see coverage on the BBC.

However the deal is only for one year, if the tournament is a success it wouldn't be a surprise to see it move somewhere the following year. The Grand Slam of Darts initially started with some coverage on ITV then moved solely to ITV4 and then moved across to Sky

Wasn't that because ITV didn't want to broadcast for a whole week, don't they now show 2 weekend tournaments?

At the beginning ITV1 showed live weekend and late night weekday highlights of the Grand Slam of Darts

ITV channels currently show about 4 or 5 tournaments in total, but I think the vast majority of the coverage, if not all of it is on ITV4

Who's the guy doing the links in the NZ v AUS Test on Sky Sports 3 now? Not somebody I recognise.

Vikram Solanki. He did the ODIs too.

No, it's because Sky bid four times as much as ITV when the rights came up.
ITV now shows five PDC tournaments, four of which are either Sat/Sun or Fri/Sat/Sun.

Don't sky get first refusal on all tournaments anyway? So the bid would have been mute, they'd have got it anyway no?

Cheers. He didn't even cross my mind when I was trying to match name to voice. Was presuming it would be a Sky presenter of some sort.

When Sky cover the world 20/20 - the first group stages involving Holland/Scotland/Ireland etc; these games are on during the day - will Sky be showing extended 1hr highlights (or even the full game replay) in the evenings?

Not sure what the highlights plans are, other than there'll only be a verdict for England and knockout games - much like last years World Cup rather than the last T20.

Its being reported Waitrose have ditched the ECB, from the same report this caught my eye

"Meanwhile, Specsavers are expected to be the next backers of
the County Championship after the loss of LV=. A more lucrative deal with Johnstone’s Paint fell through because of minimal TV coverage for the county game"

Being Charles Sale I'm sceptical, but its interesting all the same.
Last edited by Neil_Harris : 13-02-2016 at 09:19

That speaks volumes if true. Just wonder how much JP would feel is enough to meet their requirements? If i were MD of a firm wanting to sponsor any sport, I would insist a % of the money goes to a TV company (Sky?) to assist them to get the game on TV.

Bit of an oddly worded piece really. Why would a deal with JP fall through because of minimal TV coverage of the county game?

As far as i'm aware there isn't any vast change to county coverage this season, it will be similar to what it normally is. So either they thought they could buy a bit more coverage or had no idea what the level of coverage of county cricket was like when they went into the tender process.

I thought Sky didn't even broadcast all the county matches which were available to them under the current contract. Was it only one match rather than two at the end of last season ?

Any new sponsor would want the CC on TV at least as much as available under current TV deal. Obviously the ECB can't force Sky to broadcast as per the contract which they were silly wasn't made conditional if they want the England games.

it's what I've said before about bed-blocking the rights. It's OK buying them, but it's another matter having them and not showing the games, in which case the ECB have the cash (so they're happy) but the CC followers and sponsors miss out.

The ECB should have clauses that insist Sky show a minimum of games; and if they don't then that part of the contract should be null-and-voided and can be given to a competitor (although can't see many wanting it ) who could then televise - or stream - the games even when Sky are showing a test or ODI.

Seems odd that you can watch Bangladesh play Oman next month, but you can't watch Lancashire v Surrey. Of course, the answer is the cameras are already in situ so Sky are simply taking the pictures....but they could cover the CC much cheaper if they could scale down the coverage; how many cameras, cameramen and commentators are REALLY needed for a county game for it to be passable? And there's no need for any of the referrals tech; in the CC just the good old umpire with his dodgy eyesight has managed for years

But even then I can't imagine one televised game is going to make a massive difference to how many pounds a sponsor is willing to pay for a competition like the County Championship, it's certainly not going to stretch into many tens or hundreds of thousands

Exactly. It will not make a jot of difference. The viewing figures for those county matches are poor, it is on daytime over 4 days and it doesn't have the atmosphere of a test. Plus, some fans ( not all ) won't watch unless it is their county. The advertiser wouldn't get much from a county game at all.

Shall we scrap the County Championship then? Nobody's watching, nobody's interested (apparantly) so let's get rid? And the second-XI Championship while we're at it. Waste of space.

Let's just have 20/20 and 50 overs. And what happens when England play Bangladesh or Zimbabwe in a Test and Sky say "oh, we have the rights but sod it, no-one will be watching THOSE games, we won't cover it"?

Basically - if you don't like the County Championship, don't watch it. But if you do it would be nice to have a portal to watch it via?