That's the key point. Cricket was always a fixture on mainstream TV and people probably took it for granted, maybe they were bored of it. May they dipped in and out.
But it really has no relevance to the debate in 2016.
More key is Sky's audience for cricket in 2009 and cricket in 2015 and how it's flatlined and even dipped.
Are people leaving sky? Or has the interest in cricket fell?

Been an interesting discussion on FTA/T20 here and I have always thought that T20 has mass potential to the casual sports fan. The problem is TV access/marketing/weather/cost/schedule/diluted product so just switching to BBC2 for example would only sort out one of the issues.

It needs someone with bold strategy and leadership to make a T20 competition in the UK work in the style of the Big Bash and to a lesser extent the CPL. The Big Bash is clearly the model we should be looking at, strongly marketed towards families, game on TV every night during the school holidays, getting the names, faces and voices of the star plays seen and heard.

It is a big job but the potential is there to create a T20 competition in the UK that had all the best players in the world (bar the Indians) in a slot that would have a strong presence in the schedules and public consciousness.

Sadly I don't think there is anyone at the ECB who would be willing to either take that risk or be able to take enough county chairmen with them to take that risk. I hope I'm wrong but I fear I'm not.

One of the biggest problems we have here compared to the Big Bash is the massive difference in climate. In Aus they have beautiful long hot summer evenings, fans in shirt sleeves, shorts - over here, more often than not its either hammering down ( like today ) or its freezing cold by the time it gets to 7/8pm.

Hence the crowds at the grounds (other than say the big derby games like Yorks/Lancs and Surrey/Middlesex) are nowhere near comparable to big bash. Having a great atmosphere at the ground, makes it a much better spectacle for TV viewers as a result.

They've now signed a 4 year deal for all Cricket from England apart from the ashes.

Maybe that's why Sunday afternoon cricket always worked?

For the sake of argument(!), if we had partial franchise cricket - the 18 counties but added Pakistan XI* and Indian XI* sides to make it 20 teams, what would the potential audience for Yorkshire v Pakistan XI and Surrey v India XI be on terrestial TV? Obvs with cricket being huge in Asia, and they could add their biggest stars to the sides, would the audience be double and some??
*To even things up there could be rules like half the side is u23 or no more than 10 one-day caps, that sort of thing!!

If we still had an one-division championship of 18 counties, we might still have some kind of Sunday league - thinking the 4-day game would be Fri-Tues with the SL in the middle. But the SL would probably be the 20/20 now, with 20's being either on the Fri - so the CC runs Sat-Tues or with the Sunday split.
Of course, with two divisions in each that would mitigate against that totally due to travel as the team you are playing in the CC might not be your local 20/20 division.
I was sorry to see the end of one-division cricket with the loss of the Sunday's 40; used to be a great afternoon!

It is nothing to do with commitment and everything to do with an interested audience.

Whilst their anti-siphoning list is much extensive than our listed events one, that is in part a reflection of the public's attitude to national importance. Ten's interest in the BBL despite it not being listed is proof of that.

No one thinks that the ECB are turning down big money deals from FTA broadcasters in favour of slightly bigger ones from Sky. So why compare the two situations as equitable?

We (whoever "we" are) see sport as premium stock because premium broadcasters are willing and able to spend money on it when free-to-air ones do not.

In Australia where regular sport on television is far more popular, and with a more commercially deregulated broadcasting regime, the demand comes from free-to-air networks

That demand is why Nine show every NRL match, or Seven every AFL match, or Ten every BBL one. Even if money were no object, ITV would not want to give up so much of their schedule to show every Premier League match.

A statistic previously cited on here by the very reliable mlt11 is that Sky have stated the average Premier League viewer only watched 30 matches per season, So roughly once a week. And that is people paying around £50 per month for the privilege of seeing matches.

I imagine all of us on this thread love cricket, want other people to love it just as much, and want it available to the largest possible audience. But that does not change the reality that some do not want to admit, that the British public are not big sport fans outside of major events.

How many sports even have their domestic competitions covered live on FTA networks? I can only think of the Pro12, which is not popular enough across the UK as a whole to interest a premium sports broadcaster. Even the BBC broadcast it locally to the relevant nations rather than as a national match of the week.

Even the the Super League Show, the BBC's rugby league highlights programme, only gets its main showing broadcast to northern England (even when the league included a London club) whilst the rest of England sees a repeat.

A repeat at 11:30pm on BBC one is more popular than original sport showing in one part of the country. Primetime repeats on BBC Two are more popular than a live match showing in other parts of the country.

Yet cricket fans think the problem is the ECB being in thrall of Sky? That given a BBL style competition that BBC Two will want to fill primetime with live matches every days for eight weeks? Even if given the rights for free?

That level of ignorance and arrogance I can just about understand in general, but on a broadcasting forum?


Indeed. The thing about Sky Sports is that though it is in a minority of households, those households all contain sport fans who could be, or already are, attracted to cricket.

The problem with BBC Two is that there are many households where people just have no interest in sport, and many more who will watch the big events but not regularly watch a league.

Of course the potential is greater as their audience includes all those with Sky Sports as well as those sport fans who, for whatever reason, do not.

But whilst it is easy to say BBC Two only has repeats on summer evenings, plenty of people want to watch those repeats. Far more than would watch a random cricket match. And those repeats will cost far less to broadcast that a cricket match.


Given how much television ratings have dropped since 2009, to stay flat would be a huge achievement.

You do realise talking plenty of sense is not the norm on DS

Nine don't show every NRL game, Fox do (although 9 show a fair few)
The AFL is shared between 3 channels also.

All I want is for the new T20 tournament to have some FTA coverage. 10 games, 1 per week or whatever it is.
I don't expect England to come back any time soon, even though my political view is that the ashes should be on the grade A protected list.

As for arrogance I think its anything but (on my part) - I've had sky for years, I love their coverage and everything they've done. But I think we're losing a generation and the ECB have to come up with something.

Cricket Australia wanted to move to FTA because the ratings weren't great and the BBL was making a loss, but it was happy coincidence and timing that Ten were out of all rights and were going to bank roll pretty much anything to get the last big rights on the table while Fox had just gone big for the NRL deal they signed not long before. Nine would have quite happily offloaded the BBL to Fox as they didn't really want it, but had to go big on the international rights to keep away Ten.

The reason why we see sports rights as premium stock is because they are, Channel Nine doesn't just have a spare £250 million lying behind the sofa to buy cricket rights. The difference between us and Australia is that they can market and sponsor the hell out of it.

It's well known in Australia that sport rights themselves are big loss makers, the benefit and profit comes from the sponsorship and advertising it draws in. Here the BBC doesn't have the advantage of being able to go to an ad break after every six balls and having 10 different sponsored segments.

I don't see the Beeb ever coming back in for cricket. They just don't have the cash and they certainly couldn't ride out the backlash.

It would have to be a commercial company. Maybe 5 taking a big gamble like Ten. But the big sponsors are also involved in Australia , another area we struggle with in English cricket.

The McDonalds T20 league live every weekend on 5. Can never see it happening mind.

As per the £250 million figure. If the ECB split it up, what would the T20 realistically go for?

A lot obviously would depend on what type and format the competition took, but as a guide, in that Australian rights deal, Ten paid £50 million for a five year contract. Whether there is a sharp increase to that for the next rights (starting in 2018/9) only time will time.

Incidentally there was a piece earlier saying the ECB will start rights negotiations for the next English TV deal at the end of the year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2...t-10-to-15-ye/

I've no idea about advertising revenue in sport so forgive me.
If 5 paid £10 million a year for a few weeks live sport, could they not get a lot of it back in ads.

Couldn't tell you, don't know what Channel 5's going rate is for advertising space. Of course Channel 5's (or any other channels) outlay wouldn't end with just gaining ownership of the rights

Whilst some FTA cricket would undoubtedly be nice here there is a tendency to overlook some salient facts.

The biggest, particularly so far as T20 cricket is concerned, is just how valuable that product now is to the pay TV market whether Sky or BT or Discovery/Eurosport. It is hard to see that any FTA network here could remotely compete in cash terms or that the ECB etc would hand over the rights unless it did. The best the FTA sector could realistically hope for is a limited window of games and they would have to pay a high price for them.

The second is that there is little evidence to suggest that cricket, whether T20 or otherwise, would reliably provide audiences exceeding what commercial FTA networks currently show in the sort of slots being discussed here. It would possibly better work on a weekend afternoon than a weekday evening. Whilst people are happy to recall the halcyon summer of 2005 on C4 they tend to forget that C4 had been gradually marginalising coverage of tests with 10.30am starts so they could show The Simpsons at 6.00pm and get a bigger audience. It often also performed less well than Countdown etc in daytime and its presence cheesed off viewers of the displaced shows. The reality is that FTA companies only want sport that will deliver a bigger audience than they would otherwise get - domestic T20 will not deliver in that regard.

The effect of live FTA coverage is often also overstated in terms of bringing new fans to the game or discovering this mythical "lost generation". Cricket at junior level is doing very nicely (given all the other distractions available to kids these days) and in any event any FTA coverage would predominantly and disproportionately be watched by casual, often older, viewers no more likely to turn up at a county cricket ground as a result of FTA coverage than beforehand.

Then there is the Wimbledon argument. If FTA coverage of that is such a positive why do we produce so few players in the world's top echelons and why aren't tennis courts springing up all round the country. Essentially because Wimbledon is an "event" largely watched by people who are no more likely to pick up a racket or join a club as a result than they are to fly to the moon.

The Olympics (totally FTA) was also supposed to create a massive legacy in terms of sports participation - what happened to that?

F1 works for FTA broadcasters because of the type of audience it attracts, footy because of the size of audience. In Rugby Union the Six Nations is an event, the rest a minority interest. Same with most sports and that includes cricket. England v Australia - yes, Essex v Gloucestershire - not so interested.

So long as that remains the case and the pay companies are willing to pay that is where most sports coverage will go.

The next deal really is this important

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2...t-10-to-15-ye/

You won't be getting any Test Cricket live on FTA anytime soon


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/36320180

You are not wrong. As to FTA cricket I hope the ECB realise that the best chance to secure something in that respect is now, not because the main FTA channels particularly want it necessarily (and that could be the ECB's biggest problem) but because there is such competition between Sky and BT that they are more likely to agree a FTA element without massively reducing their own bids for the remainder in order to ensure that they get the main deals.

That said FTA coverage should not be seen as a panacea for the game. It is likely to be limited in extent, it is likely that FTA interest would be confined to T20 and it will really only succeed in a big way if it finds its way onto either BBC One (unlikely for financial reasons) or ITV's main channel (unlikely for different financial reasons). Only those channels have the reach to draw in the significant numbers of "casual" viewers which is what sport on tv needs to get big audiences - presumably the sort of audiences the ECB wishes to reach. I see no likelihood in any event that a limited amount of domestic cricket on FTA tv will make any significant difference to cricket's future.

It is also unlikely that ITV would clear a weeknight schedule for T20 county cricket so the best bet is a Saturday or Sunday afternoon/early evening. Once you start talking ITV 4, C4, C5 etc then frankly after maybe an initial burst interest would soon drop or audience numbers would be disappointingly low.

I fear that the ECB will once again prove itself to be the equivalent of the old adage that a camel is a horse designed by committee with its "desire to have all 18 counties involved" in any new T20 comp and its tail wagging the dog approach to things.

The current schedule is a dog's breakfast with so many county championship games consigned to the icy, watery wastelands of April, May and September, and most competitions lacking discernible structure and purpose - the one day cup for example sees Yorkshire play 4 games between 7 and 15 June, then nothing until another 4 between 24 July and 1 August but with the final not until 17 September (too late in any event). You can't sustain interest in a competition doing that.

Saturdays incredibly are a cricketing desert with Yorkshire not playing on one until August 6th I think, and only 2 after that (both away). There is also little guaranteed county cricket of any description during the main summer school holiday period.

The ECB is to some extent the victim of history in terms of the current county structure with which it is saddled so it deserves some sympathy. I wish it well but fear another messy compromise.

Next year the One Day Cup will be early season, April/May with the final in July, similar to the old B&H Cup.

Saturday's generally don't rank well for cricket, internationals and Finals Day aside, attendances are normally down because a large number of fans are off playing club cricket or at other events like football.

Little guaranteed county cricket during the summer holidays? Teams are playing a quarter of their Championship games in August and half of their 50-over games during the holiday period.

Should be an interesting interview on TMS today.

Some of the ideas are worth exploring - evening sessions for test matches and county championship cricket for example (if not full blown day/night matches). I've often thought that you could attract bigger audiences for the test game by, for example the evening session starting at say 6pm on weeknights of matches instead of matches being scheduled to end at 6.

The notion of any more first class counties is one that should be quickly forgotten - no idea how he reckons that could be sustainable when saying in the same breath that 3 counties have been saved from going bust in the last year.

The main worry is with the plans for T20 - plenty of talk of multiple options, franchises, city based teams, but no seeming clear plan or preferred option beyond that it must involve all counties. Well how about this - a 10 team, 2 division, "franchise" comp based on pairing counties squads (one "primary", one "secondary" county) and possibly inviting one or two overseas teams (Afghanistan and Holland, Scotland and Ireland rather than the big boys though). Played in school summer hols, north and south divisions, 8 matches each (4 home 4 away), 1 home game played at the "partner" counties ground, top two in each division to semi finals and final. Only test matches would be played during the same period with T20 at 7pm on test days and 3pm/7pm on non test days.

Teams (by way of example) - Yorkshire/Durham, Lancashire/Derbyshire, Notts/Leics, Warwickshire/Worcs/Northants, Middlesex/Essex, Surrey/Kent, Hampshire/Sussex, Gloucestershire/Somerset, Glamorgan/Ireland/Scotland (Celtic Tigers), Afghanistan or Holland

The teams would have to be managed on a franchised basis, Big Bash style, separate from the current county structure and might need new names (city based eg Birmingham Bears or generic eg Western Bulldogs) but centred on playing at the biggest venues and could include overseas stars. Profits shared appropriately between partner counties.

Just a thought but basis for including everyone whilst offering a franchise Big Bash/IPL model with stronger squads. Bulk of games on pay TV but up to 8 games on FTA. Final on both pay and FTA but semis only on pay.

April/May is too early for a 50 over competition. LateMay/June would be better.

As to Saturdays if you use the same logic you wouldn't play much football on a Saturday given how many "fans" play the game themselves that day. How much football is there in June or July on a Saturday? We are talking TV exposure here - Saturday is a major opportunity for that in the summer.

As to summer holidays I accept your point about the proportion of championship games but for the "younger generation" that is when you should be offering far more one day cricket and primarily T20 which is what they, and the big crowds generally, mainly want to see.

But how can you offer the younger generation more one day cricket in the summer holidays when you've just said the 50-over competition should be in May/June? Do you want an extra competition in an already crowded schedule?

You know as well as I do that football is different, how many people play football on a Saturday morning and then go to a game that afternoon. You don't do that with club cricket, you lose your whole afternoon and part of the evening (possibly more if you have an away game)

This year 10 out of the 51 matches at Euro 2016 take place on a Saturday, for three consecutive Saturday's there are triple headers of football. Football is King in this country, it's almost impossible to compete against any kind of live football, especially tournament football and ones on FTA channels

Has David Gower got a touch of conjunctivitis today?

The killer question, surely, is - hypothetically speaking - if you had a small selection of T20 on an FTA channel, how much revenue would the ECB lose? If the answer to that question is 'not that much in total', then you would want them to give it a go. We're all talking about viewing figures here, but if the financial risk isn't that great, then they are not going to rate worse than Sky, so you might as well try.

International cricket is the subscription-driver for Sky, I would argue. Obviously, the domestic stuff works as padding - for the dedicated cricket fan, there is plenty of cricket on during the summer (practically a game a day) and obviously the more domestic limited-overs cricket that Sky can show means better value for the subscriber, ergo more likely to subscribe. But it is the premium test match series (and other international cricket) that are the real subscription drivers, surely. The point is, *if* you had, I dunno, 10 T20 matches a year shown on, say, BBC Two, how much less would Sky pay for the rights for the international stuff? Logically, not that much. Obviously, if they want to play a game of brinkmanship (threaten to pay less for the international rights unless they have total exclusivity) things get harder.

There's been a lot of very sensible stuff written here about potential viewing figures and the like, but nobody has said what it would *lose* the ECB to pursue a small amount of domestic T20 FTA, all that people have said is that the *gain* will not be as much as some have said.

Actually, I would try to get ITV on side to show the (two) international T20 matches. Ensure to schedule one of them on Bank Holiday Monday in August (as it has been for the last couple of years). It's international cricket, ITV would, you'd hope, pay a not-bad rate for international sport, and it wouldn't rate too badly. It would, at least, be more in the public perception than having it stuck away on Sky. Again, how much less would Sky pay to not show two T20 matches? The shortfall may well not be made up by ITV, but you have to balance the financial shortfall against the gain of eyeballs.

Those are the toss-ups that the ECB should be making. I don't think that you will magically grow the game as some have suggested by putting domestic T20 FTA, but I don't think it should be automatically dismissed either. It's a game of margins - how much financial shortfall can you put up with compared to how much growth of viewing figures.

Go on, clever people - tear my argument apart. I'm sure I've missed something!