Cricket on free-to-air TV. Or maybe not?

[Cali]

Today it was announced that Sky Sports will have exclusive broadcast rights to the Cricket until 2013, with only a tiny little 45 minute highlights package available on Five (which many have trouble receiving).

We are trying to drum up support for a Facebook group on this issue: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=2204867720 which is small at the moment but we're pimping it out there to everyone we can think of!

Now that the campaigning part of this post is over - I am so angry that Cricket will not be on free to air until at least 2014 and really, is it likely that sense will prevail and cricket will be on free to air then? I love listening to TMS but it's not the same as being able to watch it.

 

[Hermiod]

Did anyone aside from Sky make a serious bid ?

This is the problem with trying to guarantee that any sport is shown on free to air television - nobody makes a bid. Of the terrestial broadcasters only ITV can really afford it and they will look at the ratings it used to get on Channel 4 and the BBC before that and decide not to bother. They aren't going to give days out of their weekly schedule over to a sport that an insufficient number of people actually watch on a regular basis.

As far as the BBC goes, can they really afford £300m over four years to show Cricket ?

Having read this article, I find the ECB's comments on this absurd. The BBC has to deliver value for money to its licence fee payers. They will look at the days when they were getting ratings figures so low for Cricket on BBC2 that they went below the minimum measurable level and were recorded as zeroes.

They have a fixed budget and cannot take risks with it. I would argue that getting the rights to Formula One back and holding on to events like the Olympics, Wimbledon, the Premier League, the Six Nations etc is far less risky.