The International Cricket Thread

[paul_e]

I'm not sure I agree. I think the ODI and t20 world cups should be free to air but test cricket is, regardless of what it's supporters say, a niche market - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jul/12/ashes-sky-england-australia-ecb-tv - This is old but shows less than half a millions viewers for the final day of an ashes test match where England went into it as favourites. It's hard to justify a public funded broadcaster paying to air that and altering 25days of scheduling to accommodate it.

[UK Redsox]

The length of cricket matches, especially Tests, is a problem for Free-to-air channels because they have other things to schedule.

It's exactly the opposite for Sky and BT, cricket is great for them because it fills up vast chunks of air time.

[hipkiss92]

I'm not sure I agree. I think the ODI and t20 world cups should be free to air but test cricket is, regardless of what it's supporters say, a niche market - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jul/12/ashes-sky-england-australia-ecb-tv - This is old but shows less than half a millions viewers for the final day of an ashes test match where England went into it as favourites. It's hard to justify a public funded broadcaster paying to air that and altering 25days of scheduling to accommodate it.

Chicken and egg situation though. Viewers will always be lower on sky, as it's behind a paywall. 2005 was a peak as we hadn't beaten the Aussies in ages, but 2015 was 3rd ashes series in the space of two years, so probably some apathy setting in amongst the wider public at that point.

Good blog here about the ECB's position of money above all else - https://beingoutsidecricket.com/

[hipkiss92]

I was on about them selling out to Sky after England won The Ashes back. England matches are of national interest and should be free to air. India have got England tests back on terrestrial TV again so well done them.

Nothing to do with India to be fair. Their rights are already sold on to Hotstar (I think), who then just sell the rights on to the highest bidder in each overseas market.

BCCI and ECB have had little to do with it.

[PaulWinch again]

I tell you what it’s a right kick in the balls when you see Talksport have the radio rights as opposed to TMS.

[paul_e]

I'm not sure I agree. I think the ODI and t20 world cups should be free to air but test cricket is, regardless of what it's supporters say, a niche market - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jul/12/ashes-sky-england-australia-ecb-tv - This is old but shows less than half a millions viewers for the final day of an ashes test match where England went into it as favourites. It's hard to justify a public funded broadcaster paying to air that and altering 25days of scheduling to accommodate it.

Chicken and egg situation though. Viewers will always be lower on sky, as it's behind a paywall. 2005 was a peak as we hadn't beaten the Aussies in ages, but 2015 was 3rd ashes series in the space of two years, so probably some apathy setting in amongst the wider public at that point.

Good blog here about the ECB's position of money above all else - https://beingoutsidecricket.com/

You, and the article linked, may be right but I suspect in this case the issue is more that BT and Sky decided it was too short notice to bother so the price was a lot lower than expected. For those channels the value comes from both advertising and subscriptions, if a few hundred thousand people buy a month subscription to watch a series that's a big pot they can add to the advertising and, they'll hope, it means those people will watch some other content as well to get value from it. That's a big gamble if they can't be sure they'll get a steady amount of viewers for most of the days. The day-night test would probably be ok but the others are relying on people getting up at 4am just to watch cricket.

[cdbearsfan]

I was on about them selling out to Sky after England won The Ashes back. England matches are of national interest and should be free to air. India have got England tests back on terrestrial TV again so well done them.

Nothing to do with India to be fair. Their rights are already sold on to Hotstar (I think), who then just sell the rights on to the highest bidder in each overseas market.

BCCI and ECB have had little to do with it.

Ah okay, fair enough. ECB still do have the rights to home games though and chose to take all that post-2005 goodwill and sell it off for 30 pieces of silver.

[cdbearsfan]

I'm not sure I agree. I think the ODI and t20 world cups should be free to air but test cricket is, regardless of what it's supporters say, a niche market - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jul/12/ashes-sky-england-australia-ecb-tv - This is old but shows less than half a millions viewers for the final day of an ashes test match where England went into it as favourites. It's hard to justify a public funded broadcaster paying to air that and altering 25days of scheduling to accommodate it.

Not really sure how quoting Sky viewing figures helps your cause. They were much better on terrestrial television, as you would expect.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/aug/30/ashes2005.broadcasting

As for the 25 days, that's still less than the snooker gets on terrestrial telly every year. And I love snooker but suggesting that terrestrial television can find 36 days (I think) every year for snooker but it would be impossible to schedule a home Ashes once every four years is a stretch, I think.

Especially as... they did manage to show The Ashes on Channel 4 till it was taken off them to sell out to Sky, and I'm sure Channel 4 would happily snatch your hand off to show the whole Ashes again if they could afford it.

[UK Redsox]

I tell you what it’s a right kick in the balls when you see Talksport have the radio rights as opposed to TMS.

Agreed. With a lot of the cricket during the working week, TMS is essential.

TalkSport's cricket coverage is nowhere near that quality.

However, at least it's better than TalkSport's football commentaries, which I find unlistenable

[paul_e]

I'm not sure I agree. I think the ODI and t20 world cups should be free to air but test cricket is, regardless of what it's supporters say, a niche market - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jul/12/ashes-sky-england-australia-ecb-tv - This is old but shows less than half a millions viewers for the final day of an ashes test match where England went into it as favourites. It's hard to justify a public funded broadcaster paying to air that and altering 25days of scheduling to accommodate it.

Not really sure how quoting Sky viewing figures helps your cause. They were much better on terrestrial television, as you would expect.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/aug/30/ashes2005.broadcasting

As for the 25 days, that's still less than the snooker gets on terrestrial telly every year. And I love snooker but suggesting that terrestrial television can find 36 days (I think) every year for snooker but it would be impossible to schedule a home Ashes once every four years is a stretch, I think.

Especially as... they did manage to show The Ashes on Channel 4 till it was taken off them to sell out to Sky, and I'm sure Channel 4 would happily snatch your hand off to show the whole Ashes again if they could afford it.

To be fair reading it back that post doesn't really make the point I was intending to and this isn't a cause, I'd prefer the games to be free to air and I also don't disagree that viewing figures would be higher but that's not really the point, it's about commercial viability.

Sky got comparatively poor figures in the match I highlighted but were still happy to outbid for almost every series in the next 5 years (with BT picking up a couple). Last year there was an iT20 against Pakistan shown on BBC and Sky where the former had 4 times the number of viewers and again that doesn't put sky off because the number of viewers they need is significantly lower than channels like BBC and C4.

For the home series of the ashes maybe C4 would be willing to gamble on spending enough to compete but they'd struggle to justify the costs for almost any other test matches and if protecting that series for them meant sky offered significantly less for the rest the overall impact on the game could be highly damaging. As I say test cricket is a niche sport that just won't be able to sustain a 5 day average audience (peak viewing figures aren't useful in this regard) that's big enough for the ECB to be able to make up the drop in income that blocking sky from bidding would create.

[manic-road]

Zac Crawley will miss the first two tests because of a wrist injury, I thought he might have done it due to boredom being stuck in his hotel room for long periods but it turns out he slipped outside the changing room.

[Rory]

I don't mind Sky or BT winning broadcast rights. It takes it off terrestrial TV but I do think they bring a little extra to it - even if it's simply not scheduling the tests to begin 30 minutes earlier so they don't interfere with Hollyoaks.

Probably 90% of the live sport I watch is cricket, so I don't mind paying a bit extra for it. What bothers me is when it's split between broadcasters. I was dismayed to find out the Big Bash was on BT Sport. I looked into buying it, but I already pay an additional £25 a month for Sky Sports, I can't justify £25 on top of that.

I'd happily pay, say, £20 a month extra to watch cricket, whatever channel it's on, and forego the Sky 'Super Sunday' Burnley vs Crystal Palace, or Aussie Rules, Netball or whatever else is on BT.

[Rory]

In fact, bring on the days of personalised TV packages. That way I'll be able to get National Geographic AND the History Channel, rather than one or the other, get to TCM without scrolling through the endless 'lifestyle' channels, and watch cricket, boxing, golf or Villa without having to sit through painfully cinematic ads for 'THE GUILDFORD DERBY: Man Utd vs Brighton' or whatever latest bollocks Sky Sports PL is contriving to lure in bored drunks.

[PaulWinch again]

Looks hard work batting there. To my untrained eye it looks like Ishant is getting reverse.

[PaulWinch again]

They’re not letting us go anywhere.