Interesting item in article in The Times a few days ago.

I no longer have it in front of me but in summary it's not established that ECB owns TV rights to domestic games played on county grounds.

If that sounds a bit odd - it's easier to understand by contrasting with the Premier League (football).

With the Premier League it's part of the PL's rules / constitution that the PL owns the TV rights to all PL games and the PL has the right to sell them.

But, apparently, there is nothing similar established for county cricket.

Report said that, as part of negotiations for new T20 tournament, ECB sent out a document to the counties asking them to sign which would acknowledge that ECB holds TV rights.

Counties have refused to sign so far.

There's no conclusion yet and it may not end up being an issue - but just an interesting anecdote re the negotiations which are going on.

thanks might partly explain why Durham were handed a tough sanction today by ECB if they were one of the party not willing to sign the deal.

looks like Sky might not be sending any commentators to india after all after BCCI essentially cancel the rest of the NZ series because lodha committee freezed all the BCCI accounts yesterday and in return BCCI just cancelled the rest of the tour.

not sure what this means for the England series but unless BCCI and Lodha sort out their differences hard to see the series going on.

The series will happen. Lodha Committee has already said it has NOT frozen BCCI bank accounts, merely asked for two payments to be frozen for the time being.

I'm not keen on those punishments for Durham. I worry it might encourage other counties to hide financial problems until it's too late.

As I understand it, Durham have to repay the money, so surely it'll take them longer to do it if they're effectively out of the running for all competitions next year.

Seems harsh on me too especially when much of the debt is down to the up-scaling of the ground resulting in it now being way too large for domestic games - something that ECB encouraged Durham to do so that they could host international games.

No test match special for the Bangladesh v England ODI series.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2...nce-2003-with/

Interesting choice of words

Test Match Special will be broadcasting for the Test Matches though

I don't understand what you mean Judio.

No Test Match Special for one day match !!

Did you know that Match of the Day also shows more than just the one best match of that day? I know I was mind blown too.

I notice ITV 4 are showing 7 and a half hours of Test match Bowls today.
If they are interested in Bowls than perhaps we could interest them in cricket.

I mean how much would Englands tour of Bangladesh cost a broadcaster?

More than you'd think, if the BBC's problems getting TMS on air for Bangladesh is an indication!

I wonder if they could of got the Australian rights BT now have? With IPL proving popular on ITV 4 it could of been a goer with ashes on ITV 1 overnight....in a dream world!

Not sure ITV could afford or make any money out of it.
Didn't BT pay close to 70 Million for the rights.
No fta network could make that pay.

BT paid a "reported" £80m for 5 years of Australian cricket.

ie £16m per year on average.

Just one England tour in that 5 year period.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34038149

Thanks for that couldn't remember the exact figure, but the point stands not sure ITV or any FTA can afford or make enough money from advertisers to show winter tours of England.
Suspect most all or nothing cricket deals will be around 70-90M for England broadcaster now because of BT Sports involvement and even the pay as you go series will probably be around 50-60M for the rights especially since some of the agency can be a pain to deal with.
really can't see FTA making a short tour work especially if the fees to buy the rights can be anything above 20M.

Is 2 weeks worth of cricket worth paying that much, not sure ITV will make any money unless the rights cost less than 20M.

Edit the number or price also depends on the number of england games, think normal rights cover 2 england tours so if one ashes cost 70M can imagine 2 india series, or 2 SA series reaching around 150M for the rights.
although should know more when the current rights expire, since I believe SA, India and england home rights all expire around the same time.

To summarise
SA rights expire in 2019 after the england series.
India rights expire in 2018.
England rights expire in 2019, (Tender out soon)

2019, isn't it? So 2020 will be the first year of a new deal. Sky's new contract (signed in early 2012) was for the 2014-17 seasons inclusive, then they took up their two-year option to take them through to 2019.

So you think Sky have paid £20m for this one off tour of Bangladesh?

yep made a mistake, thanks for reminding me.
the Ashes will be the last year for the rights.

No but I think that the limit which would make money for ITV, anything over that they struggling to get high enough rating for the advertisers to make money out of it.
no idea what Sky paid for the rights but it is certainly higher than 20M.
generally when England/India tour the likes of Zimbabwe, Sri lanka, Bangladesh the boards try to loot as much of money they can from overseas broadcasters, so the rights are not cheap that people assumed would be.
Even TMS struggled to get the rights for what they deem affordable or worth it.

All I can say the rights are probably worth more than 20M and less than 70M.
so any value between that.

really with BT Sports paying 80M for the Ashes it essentially meant all the overseas boards now have a higher figure to what they expect uk broadcaster to pay for the rights.
last winter Sky were in discussion a lot with PCB for the rights and Telegraph reported PCB had a windfall so guessing the rights were not cheap for sky and probably 3 or 4 times higher what sky would normally pay for a Pakistan away series.

Doubt Sky paid the same amount that BT paid for the Ashes series for pakistan or Bangladesh.
but guessing Pakistan series came close and Bangladesh was probably around 40-50M which is a lot for a short Bangladesh tour.

Although it should be noted sky brought the rights in 2015 so they probably sensed that if they waited longer for the rights the value will just go up.
http://www.skysports.com/cricket/new...-of-bangladesh
they signed the Pakistan deal quite late which probably pushed the priced up.
Think they also signed a deal with sri lanka quite early, they got the next england tour signed already.
so even if BT or FTA wanted these rights they can't.
think the next available England games will be after 2020 now for television unless ECB decided to tour Bangladesh or Zimbabwe in the next 3 yrs or Pakistan.

I think I'm always a bit naive when it comes to broadcasting but I'd have guessed a 3 week tour of of one of the weaker test nations would only cost £5-7 million.
The whole English summer costs around £70ish million at present.

Think Sky would like that as well but really the overseas boards hold the rights and they generally only sell it for a good price and what they think is the market value and they do threaten to not sell it at all if the price is not met.

lose-lose situation for Sky since if they don't pay the price the rights could go elsewhere or worse no one shows the cricket in the uk and then the press starts asking why Sky didn't pay the rights and then generally the rights are more expensive last minute.

might have been in 2006 where Sky nearly had no rights to the india series since Nimbus were asking for all the india games or none.
in the end Sky had to bite the bullet and pay it.

wonder what TMS paid for the radio rights must be something ridiculous if they signed the deal 2 or 3 days before the first game.