Should Cricket Australia walk away from Foxtel and Seven at the end of broadcast negotiations, it will be gaining one thing the current partners cannot offer: flexibility to move games out from behind the paywall or back again once a contract has begun.
Where the deal with Foxtel and Seven carved cricket up into distinct free-to-air and subscription portions locked in for six years, the emergence of Ten/Paramount as a genuine contender for the rights has much to do with flexibility as well as money.
Network Ten once made the Big Bash League sing.Credit:Getty
Industry sources have told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that each of Ten/Paramount, Nine (owner of this masthead) and Foxtel had made bids for all the content being offered by Cricket Australia, including Tests, international white-ball games and a Big Bash League still modelled on a 61-game season. Seven has bid to retain its coverage of Test cricket.
After two rounds of formal bidding, which placed Ten/Paramount at or near the front of the queue on a dollar basis, other broadcasters have pointed out that Seven and Nine are by a distance the most-watched free-to-air networks in Australia, noting how the likes of the A-League and horse racing have struggled for audience share on Ten.
But by signing up with a partner that has both free-to-air and streaming wings under the same banner, Cricket Australia and the broadcaster would have the room to manoeuvre matches and series towards the type of audience that best fits the circumstances.
That may be the broad base of a national TV audience – see the huge figures for the Socceroos’ World Cup game against Tunisia as an example why that still matters – or the smaller but deeply committed group of followers prepared to pay for streaming.
It would also allow for the sort of deal that would put the men’s white-ball team back onto free-to-air screens, the reversal of a decision in 2018 that still sticks in the craw of many cricket watchers on the basis that they feel – and the federal government’s anti-siphoning guidelines indicate – such games should be freely available national events.
The possibilities offered by dealing with a different and more diverse kind of broadcast media partner, or at least one that is able to do expedient deals of its own, have been raised in a quarter that, for most of the past 15 years, Cricket Australia has tried to avoid mimicking.
While much has been made of how English cricket has been stuck behind a paywall ever since the end of the epochal 2005 Ashes series, the national men’s and women’s teams have been given bigger platforms in recent times by the deal between Sky and Channel 4 for select, big events such as World Cup finals to be made free to all.
It’s a level of flexibility that Foxtel and News Corp, for all the growth of the Kayo service that was launched in conjunction with the start of the 2018-19 cricket season, cannot offer unless they were to strike a bargain with rivals Seven, Nine or Ten to allow select men’s white-ball games to be simulcast.
Cricket Australia’s chief executive, Nick Hockley, talked up the range of “options and permutations” available to the governing body after two formal rounds of rights bidding, followed by individual discussions with each potential partner in turn.
“There’s lots of different options and permutations and we’re just working that through at the moment,” Hockley told ABC Radio. “We’re really pleased with the interest from all the parties that you’d expect and I think we’re very appreciative and have a fantastic relationship with both our free-to-air partner and our subscription TV partner.
“I think it’s a balance. We’ll be looking to put in place arrangements in the best interests of Australian cricket overall and also that help contribute to building the game and community levels.
“Ultimately we’re wanting to drive as much value into the game in its broadest sense, so we can continue to invest in growing the game at community level and encourage as many kids as possible to pick up a bat and ball.”
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