Cricket Australia signs broadcast partners

As part of the newly inked deals, CA Australia Chief Executive Officer James Sutherland confirmed that all international matches will now be telecast live and in full, while all KFC T20 Big Bash League games will be on free-to-air TV for the first time.

Innovative new digital offerings will also be offered to cricket fans to ensure unparalleled access to the game under a joint $60 million partnership between CA and Channel Nine.

The pair has agreed to develop CA’s digital assets to integrate the telecast and digital offerings in an innovative approach providing compelling, high-quality cricket content on CA’s website, cricket.com.au, and on PCs,  smartphone and tablet devices.

Nine televised games will be streamed live to smartphone and tablets.

Cricket will be the first sport to have no restrictions on smartphone and tablet screen size, and will be the only major sport in Australia to stream matches live on PCs. 

Mr Sutherland said the combination of TV and recently-announced new sponsorship revenue will provide enhanced ability to invest in cricket development from the grassroots up.

CA will accelerate its work encouraging more kids, females, indigenous Australians and Australians of non-English-speaking backgrounds to play and follow cricket.

CA also wants to improve the support available to grassroots cricket at a community club level and will now assess facility development possibilities.

The financial benefit flowing to cricket, including increased Twenty20 cricket employment opportunities, will also mean more talented young Australian athletes will choose cricket as their preferred professional sporting career.

“The average annual value of the broadcast of Australian cricket in Australia to Australian viewers has just increased 118% compared to the last five years to $590 million, which is very important to our ability to invest in the continuing development of our sport,” Mr Sutherland said.

“Our multiple formats attract a diverse audience and also offer broadcasters the bonus of a great launch pad for each new broadcast year.

“Cricket here, as with premium sport globally, is a great value proposition, bringing viewers to TV networks who then tend to stay on for other offerings from those networks, whether it be evening news and evening programming off the back of a game, or other content the networks promote.”

Mr Sutherland said CA was delighted to continue its 34-year international broadcast partnership with Channel Nine, which has provided Australian fans with leading-edge cricket coverage via continuous improvement.

“The Nine-cricket partnership is nothing short of astounding,” he said.

“It is great they will be launching the next phase of their CA partnership with next summer’s Ashes – and separately, they already hold rights to the coming Ashes in England and to the ICC 2015 World Cup due to be played in Australia-New Zealand”.

CA was also very pleased to welcome Channel Ten as a new broadcast partner for the KFC BBL T20 competition.

“We created BBL for one compelling reason – to create a cricket offering for kids, families and females in our efforts to hold our place as Australia’s favourite sport,” Mr Sutherland said.

“That strategy is working and it is very gratifying that we have been able to build a new highly- successful domestic sports competition which after only two summers is capable of earning a slot as premium free-to-air TV content.

“The BBL is bringing lots of new fans to cricket and being on Ten gives us the ability to engage with even more fans than ever before.

“From next summer, Australian cricket moves forward with strong international cricket revenue and also now with strong domestic cricket revenue as well.”

Mr Sutherland stressed that today’s announcement was specifically about the broadcast to Australian fans of cricket played in Australia.

They do not include revenue from the sale of the right to broadcast Australian cricket in offshore markets such as India, the UK, North America and the rest of the world via established contracts with a range of broadcasters. 

And nor does it include the coverage of Australian teams’ international tours.

Collectively, CA’s domestic and international rights to telecast each summer’s cricket for the next five years add up to more than $840 million, which does not include extra TV revenue which also comes from Champions League Twenty20, from CA’s share of ICC events TV income or from radio, new digital and from yet-to-be concluded domestic cricket deals.

CA is also still in talks on radio and domestic cricket rights for competitions such as the RYOBI One-Day Cup.