New Australian cricket broadcast deal - Full Media Release from Cricket Australia

Cricket Australia has announced a new $590 million dollar broadcast agreement with Channel Nine and Network Ten. Read on for the full media release from CA:

“Australian cricket’s new $590 million domestic broadcast arrangements with Channels Nine and Ten will help fund improved cricket experiences for fans, kids and community clubs and strengthen cricket’s position as Australia’s favourite sport.

Cricket Australia Chief Executive Officer James Sutherland said all international games will now be telecast live and in full nationally, all BBL games will be on free-to-air TV and innovative new digital offerings will offer cricket fans unparalleled access to the game.

Channel Nine will continue to provide Australian fans with innovative, world-class cricket coverage for another five years, and has also agreed to a $60 million joint venture with Cricket Australia to develop new cricket digital products for fans, including streaming matches live to PCs.

The exciting new KFC Big Bash League will be available on free-to-air TV via Network Ten, greatly increasing the audience for the new competition which is already bringing new fans to the game.

Nine CEO David Gyngell said the new deal was a terrific outcome for Australian cricket and continued Nine’s rich history with the great game.

“Nine’s on-going relationship with the game is a source of great pride to me personally and to all Nine employees,” he said.

“I’d like to thank our partners Cricket Australia and also Bruce Gordon and the WIN network whose associated deal with Nine paved the way for today’s agreement.”

TEN Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Hamish McLennan said: “We are delighted to join forces with Cricket Australia as its exclusive domestic Twenty20 cricket partner and we look forward to a long, successful partnership.

“The Twenty20 Big Bash League is a great competition and TEN and Cricket Australia will make it a major free-to-air television event.

“Our agreement with CA fits perfectly with TEN’s strategy of bringing big television events to a broad audience.”

The CA and Nine joint partnership to develop CA’s digital assets will 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, Sutherland said.

“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,” Sutherland said.

Cricket offers broadcasters guaranteed national ratings, three different formats, each with their own unique appeal, and greater audience reach than any other sport.

“Cricket is the soul of summer – nothing beats it,” 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.”

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,” 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.

“I would like to pay tribute to Patrick Delany and FoxSports for their outstanding work helping us launch and establish BBL and for creating the platform of awareness and success for the competition.

“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.

“The BBL broadcast deal justifies our strategy of investing in the BBL’s development up front over the last two summers on the basis of creating a new, domestic-based BBL revenue stream for Australian cricket down the track.

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

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.”