England Cricket to return to free-to-air TV in 2020
View(s):The return of live cricket to the BBC for the first time in 21 years was celebrated with cakes and cookies at their Salford headquarters.
No wonder the Beeb were in party mood — with the invitation to eat cake in the kitchen sent to all sports staff — because the ECB’s five-year rights deal from 2020 gives them plenty of cricket on the cheap, on the back of a £1.1billion contract mainly paid for by Sky Sports.
Sky are understood to have forked out around £200m-a-year to retain their live international cricket rights and the lion’s share of the new T20 competition after a cash battle with rivals BT Sport. England international cricket will return to the BBC for the first time since 1999 in 2020.
The tender has been a triumph for ECB chairman Colin Graves and chief executive Tom Harrison, who staked their positions on the rights process.
They succeeded in maximising rights revenues while at the same time bringing back free-to-air cricket to the BBC, thus ensuring their sport has the biggest reach possible to help encourage participation.
Harrison said: ‘We made a lot of effort to ensure all parties knew about our direction of travel and were comfortable that it would be a fair and open process. This is a great result for cricket. ECB has secured the reach, revenue and relevance the game deserves.’
The BBC are understood to be paying just £13m a year for more than 100 hours of coverage. Their cut-price deal includes two live England men’s home T20 games, 10 matches live from the new T20 tournament that starts in 2020 — including the final — as well as prime-time highlights of all England Tests, One Day Internationals and T20s.
The Beeb also extended their audio rights contract for the ball-by-ball Test Match Special for the same period and are believed to have seen off a major challenge from talkSPORT for Cricket Australia’s Ashes rights for the next two series Down Under.
CA’s pay dispute with their international players has meant the official announcement of the five-year Ashes agreement for 5 Live has been delayed.
Of course, eating cake is very much part of the TMS tradition so it was appropriate that the email inviting employees to mark the deal read: ‘To celebrate the fantastic news about the BBC’s new rights deal for English cricket, there will be cakes and cookies in the kitchen areas of Quay House from 3pm. Please tuck in.’
Tony Hall, BBC director-general who led their bid, said: ‘It’s long been our ambition to bring live cricket back to BBC television. Cricket is an integral part of the British summer and we will be putting our full weight behind the nation’s favourite summer sport.’
ITV did not bid, but both Channels 4 and 5 made offers. Sky had always been expected to retain their rights, especially as the ECB went to market with two-and-a-half years of the old agreement still to run. And BT Sport began the TV talks believing it was a fait accompli for Sky.
But Harrison and his advisers managed to persuade BT that their bid would be considered as seriously as Sky’s.
This led BT to put in a giant offer of about £175m-a-year that gave ECB the competitive cash auction they were depending on to reach their £1bn target.
Surrey chairman Richard Thompson was the first of the ECB high command to go public — in an interview with Sportsmail’s Paul Newman — on the importance of terrestrial TV being part of the next rights deal when others at Lord’s did not seem too bothered. He even resigned as chairman of the ECB commercial committee over the issue.
BT Sport were ‘very disappointed’ to lose out, especially having already secured TV rights to this winter’s Ashes from Cricket Australia, but there were no complaints about how the tendering process was carried out.
The ECB’s next task is deciding the format of their city-based T20 tournament, which brought in at least the £40m-a-year target from the rights packages.
Graves and Harrison have gambled on getting the money in first before even deciding where the teams will be located. The strategy is for the two rights partners to play a big part in the planning.
The Football League, who will be going to the market soon, can now hope BT Sport spend their cricket bid money on competing with Sky for their rights.
England international cricket will return to the BBC for the first time since 1999 in 2020
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