OK - thanks - apologies.

I don't think it's worth debating any figures until we can verify that they are actually correct.

That's why I brought them here, to try to piece together the actual numbers. Over on the blog it appeared on they've been taken as correct and the ECB have been ripped to pieces. I felt they were wrong but didn't want to go into it over there.

OK, thanks a lot.

As you say, it's totally unrepresentative - the World Cup on home soil will obviously have generated a large amount of one-off revenue (even compared to other World Cup years), plus the India visit.

So we would need to see the numbers over a complete 4 or 5 year cycle to get anything meaningful.

OK - thanks again.

Just to say that the whole thing is much more complicated than can ever be covered satisfactorily in a short forum post because there are numerous aspects which may not be directly comparable.

Just one example - Lords is sold out every day of a Test with eye watering prices - all that revenue is turnover in the accounts of MCC, not ECB. MCC then pays ECB a "staging fee".

What happens in Aus? I have no idea but we would need to know to do a full comparative analysis of cricket finances in the two countries.

And that's just one example of one issue. There will be numerous others.

Out of interest here 2014/15 ECB financial report.
would be a fair comparison since india toured both countries, although Australia hosted the world cup but the actual money earned from it was negligible and profits were shared equally between all ICC members.
http://www.ecb.co.uk/sites/default/f...eport_2014.pdf
Interesting ECB idea is to make record profits in the first year with worsening results in the next three years.

Turnover is a record £174.7m 42% percent higher than the 2013 Ashes year.
record profit of 28.4 M
Gross profit is 155.8M up from 105.5M

although Expenses are up to 128M, counties got more money and charity got more money but a lot of that is linked to india tour IE ECB wanted to spend more more in this year or this cycle because of increased money from india visit.

Thanks - that's interesting - so by an amazing coincidence ECB and CA revenue was almost identical that year.

However I would be very cautious about the World Cup in Aus - do we really know that CA made little out of it? Even if profits were distributed amongst all ICC countries, how has the profit figure been calculated?

It's also possible that all revenues (except probably TV which would be done by ICC centrally) were in the CA revenue number and then the payment to ICC is within expenses. Not saying that definitely is the case but it's possible - at a minimum it would need to be checked.

Interesting ECB included a new risk in the report from the repeated one of Terrorist attack or if BCCI stopped touring England.


quite a ironic statement.

http://www.cricket.com.au/news/world...lus/2015-10-29
CA received $51 M but the actual figures don't make sense since the indian tour only accounted for $48M but it really should be worth double that since India brings ECB £50M extra.
so really CA should have received around $100M from the India visit.
the only explanation Is that India tours Australia 4 times in the cycle, England twice.
So the tv money is divided in 4 instead of 2.

Really can't see CA making more money because of the World cup.
with ICC getting the money from TV rights and ticket sales.
their literally no way CA can make money to affect the finances.

Edit it is likely the country made more profit than the actual cricket board.
from what I read most of the profits went to the country and local economy.

Although it should be noted in the next ICC events money won't be shared in equal amount although ECB and CA will still get the same amount.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine...ry/712173.html
confirmation that CA didn't make any added money from the world cup.
ICC made US$1564 million in revenue in that ICC Cycle.
Full member surplus would be $52M
the article just shows how much extra money ECB/CA/BCCI would get because of the new changes.
Also in future year ECB actually makes slight more money than CA in ICC revenue terms
they get 0.9% distribution cost, CA get 0.6%.

Thanks.

I would still be very surprised if CA didn't make anything extra from the World Cup.

To give a comparison - in the FA Cup gate receipts are split equally between the home and away teams. However the home team keeps all money from food, drink, programmes, hospitality etc. They also get extra merchandising because all the fans are at their ground and therefore going to their club shop. So the home team actually pockets far more than the away team.

So even if the ICC gets all TV revenue and ticket sales separately there may well be a whole mass of "indirect income" which would accrue to CA from the event being held in Aus.

Off course but those revenue wouldn't really affect the total revunue and would probably be cancelled out by the added cost of running the tournament.
Even if they did make something would be 2-5 million max, ICC are pretty strict with the tournaments and need to be since their income is mostly based on ICC events.
Pretty small percentage compared to the total turnover.

My point is we just don’t know – it’s not sensible to draw conclusions when we don’t have all the facts.

Hospitality income on its own can comprise a very large proportion of income for many sports organisations because of the absolutely huge prices charged.

Yes, there will be additional costs as well – but they will be within expenses. The discussion so far has been about revenues.

Right, this is what we were looking for. Per CA Annual Report:

Revenues for the 4 year cycle:

13/14 - AUS$296m
14/15 - AUS$363m
15/16 - AUS$303m
16/17 - AUS$261m

4 year total = AUS$1,223m

Average per year = AUS$306m

Average per year = £146m (at today’s exchange rate; obviously in practice this will vary over time).

See link (slide 20):

https://www.clearinghouseforsport.go..._2013-2014.pdf

As posted above ECB revenue for 14/15 (which represents the 2014 cricket summer) was £175m.

We don’t have forecasts for future years from the ECB.

Regardless of the actual figures, still no one has explained how any of this would be relevant to the ECB when negotiating future TV deals?

I think the original poster was suggesting that the ECB should follow CA's approach to selling cricket to broadcasters, using those rather vague numbers as a back up.

I think he was trying to say CA revenue is the same/higher even though all it's tv rights are FTA unlike ECB where everything is pay.
plus CA do a far better job with the domestic rights even if CA pays for the coverage of the Domestic games/Warm up/Shield cricket.
I really wish Sky/BT doesn't have 100% control of the domestic game next time around, ECB should make the live streams of county games more easily available just like in CA.

I see no reason why these can't not be shown live on the web, also if all games are shown live on the web would make it easier for ECB to give a FTA channel the highlight package for the T20 blast.
the only reason that fell through last season was barring the sky games the tv coverage was awful for TV purposes.
but seeing the quality of the CA domestic stream and warm up games for touring sides in Australia the coverage is good enough to package as a highlights show.

The problem then that is that Australia and the UK are very different media markets. Notably:

Televised sport is more popular in Australia than here.

The anti-siphoning laws in Australia are stricter than the listed sporting events law here.

Pay TV take up is much smaller in Australia than here so broadcasts like Fox Sport have less equivalent purchasing power.

The Australian free-to-air market is more competitive with three major commercial networks (Seven, Nine, Ten) compared to one here (ITV). Channel 4 are more akin to SBS.

And Australian television regulation is more commercialized than here.


So in Australia there is far greater demand for rights, and greater opportunities to exploit them, for free-to-air networks than in the UK. There is nothing the ECB, or any sport body, can do to change that

The post you copied here is a blatant example of a syllogistic fallacy. The only issue for the ECB is where the balance is to be found between the competing needs for income and exposure.

Do you think my idea of 5 or 6 packages could work (rather than the ridiculous 30 odd we have at present)?

Just been having a look back through this thread, looks like one of my old posts has been quoted without and time or date context, so let me try and clarify

In 2013 Cricket Australia signed a new TV rights deals

Aus$100m with Ten for five year Big Bash rights

approx Aus$450m with Nine for five year International rights (in both cash and contra-advertising)

With other bundled rights for domestic cricket and CA's digital online portal the total value was Aus$590m

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/...603-2nlsm.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/busi...ce6472ba11171d

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-0...ndfall/4732566

The currency equivalent I mentioned at the time (whenever that post was from) was an illustrative guide to people who were thinking the Australian deal was huge and the ECB were lagging behind. Of course since the deal was signed in 2013 the exchange rate has dropped from approx 0.7 to 0.48, but you don't get that because there's no time context in the extracts reposted


The issue is not the packages, but the makeup and aim of them. It doesn't matter if you have 2 or 30, the big networks (Sky or BT) will hoover them up if they want to. All you do is increase the chances or hurting the consumer and splitting them up between 2 pay-TV networks. The only way it will alter is if packages are specifically aimed at FTA coverage (or highlights) Or if there are riders in them that give them cause to work with FTA partners.

Not quoted, pasted in its entirety as I felt it added to the discussion.
I did credit you. Its from 3/6/2013 from this thread http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1736210&page=5

With Sky having less money, and BT possibly interested their may be a bidding war for the ashes. This driving down the price for other packages and possibly interesting FTA.

I never said you didn't credit me I said there was no time or date context to it. Much of the confusion in future posts about the value of the rights in comparison to England could have been avoided if was stated the post was from 2013

Impossible to say without knowing what the current "packages" are.

I would assume though they are not separate packages of rights to be sold separately, but instead the total number from all permutations offered.

Only the Premier League have to sell their rights in discrete packages, as this was a negotiated solution following intervention by the European Commission. Although that requirement has legally expired, it is in the Premier League's interests to continue selling in that way.

It avoids the potential risk of another investigation, but also proven to be far more lucrative to them. But they also have no need to compromise on exposure, so can easily commit to selling to the highest bidder regardless.

But all other sports are free to negotiate and sell their rights however they wish. And whilst five distinct packages may be simple, a too rigid structure could mean broadcasters who would be interested in some cricket may decline.

Six packages really seems too few, for example ITV4 could be interested in Friday evening matches from the T20 Blast, but not other nights. So if it was all or nothing they would pick nothing.

Personally I can only see a simple package structure being of interest to dedicated sport broadcasters. What I would do is talk to potential broadcasters about their specific interests and needs, work out which permutations work best for those of the ECB, then individually negotiate deals based on that. But that is essentially a 35-package-like solution.

Just to say many thanks for your clarification.

As you appreciate I wasn’t aware of the time context and this obviously impacted my subsequent posts – apologies.

Yeah I didn't realise the exchange rate had improved so much.

6 months ago I would have been sure the value of the cricket rights would go down, however I'm not so sure now that BT have shown some interest.
If the ECB are clever they could tailor packages to suit 3 broadcasters and generate more revenue.