Black Wednesday: English Home Tests - Now Exclusive to SKY

[PY]

BBC Cricket - The Article

The way that the ECB is run, I fully expect them to make it exclusive to Sky and us people who can't afford Sky will no longer have any international cricket on TV. I just can't see the ECB being able to refuse the reputed £20m they'd lose if they stayed with Channel 4.

However, I was thinking that home Test series (except for the 2nd Test of the summer) was on the protected list that includes Wimbledon and footy World Cup etc etc which had to be on terrestrial TV?

Thoughts?

 

[Sudeep]

Looks as if India isn't the only country with TV rights problems. Sad, very sad.

 

[PY]

Having read even more into it, it seems like the offer from BSkyB, which involves sharing the cricket with Channel 4, while taking live cricket from our screen might end up allowing us more cricket in total because it looks like the highlights from all the ODIs and county games and things might get put on Channel 4 which would be quite nice.

Taken from the Guardian Online :
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/story/0,10069,1373262,00.html

"The two bids in brief
BSkyB

Will pay £60m a year. Gets Exclusive rights to all home Test match cricket, one-day matches, international and domestic Twenty20 cricket and county matches.

BSkyB/Channel 4

Will pay Around £40m a year. Gets BSkyB will show the first home Test of the summer, Channel 4 the second. Whichever station is not broadcasting the match live will screen highlights. Sky will show one-day internationals, the Twenty20 Cup and county matches, and Channel 4 the highlights."

 

[Langeveldt]

The complete lack of cricket on TV just echoes the fact that cricket is a dying minority sport in the UK.. Who will be lured into the game when they can't even see their heroes on tv?

 

[BoyBrumby]

The complete lack of cricket on TV just echoes the fact that cricket is a dying minority sport in the UK.. Who will be lured into the game when they can't even see their heroes on tv?

I'm not quite sure it's dying; although the county championship badly needs a shot in the arm of, I don't know, something.

The game badly needs terrestrial coverage tho. I am lucky enough to have Sky, but feel for anyone who doesn't.

BTW: why the bloomin' flip didn't Sky show the South Africa "A" game? Gotta be better than the 700 hours of poxy golf they show every bloody week!

 

[Scaly piscine]

"The two bids in brief
BSkyB

Will pay £60m a year. Gets Exclusive rights to all home Test match cricket, one-day matches, international and domestic Twenty20 cricket and county matches.

BSkyB/Channel 4

Will pay Around £40m a year. Gets BSkyB will show the first home Test of the summer, Channel 4 the second. Whichever station is not broadcasting the match live will screen highlights. Sky will show one-day internationals, the Twenty20 Cup and county matches, and Channel 4 the highlights."

The money differential seems a bit high to me, basically Sky get one less home series out of 4 (at least) series overall in a year and yet the money drops by 33% and that's with Channel 4 paying for that series along with the highlights to everything else. Sky must have bid a lot more for exclusive rights so they could monopolise the sport (which will shoot themselves in the foot in the long term).

 

[SpaceMonkey]

many people have sky now..and sky hope getting exclusive rights will force alot of people to upgrade to sky (hense so much more money offered).
If it meant never having to miss cricket for stupid hollyoaks and no more stupidly early 10.30am starts that ch4 insist on then that'll do me

 

[Scaly piscine]

10.30am starts make plenty of sense these days considering the umpires offer bad light as soon a small fluffy cloud threatens to cross the path of the sun.

 

[superkingdave]

Hmm, Sky subscription including sports not much more than a broadband connection per month, i think its a pretty good deal. You get live premiership, live cricket, live rugby, live tennis, and pretty much every other sport under the sun, Anyway there is always the pub.

28 pounds is the cheapest package including sports per month.

 

[steds]

NOO!!
I think channel 4's cricket coverage is soooooooo much cooler than Sky.

 

[Richard Rash]

Free to air sport is a thing of the past. Stop complaining, spend less time talking about it and do more work and you might be able to afford it.

Though i do agree with steds. When I was watching the NZ v.s Eng series the channel four team were far supperior to sky

 

[Langeveldt]

I don't like Ch4's coverage.. But to be expected to pay £28 plus £10 TV license.. £38 a month.. Nowhere in the world do you have to pay that amount for the privelage of watching cricket..

 

[superkingdave]

that's only valid (the tv licence part) if the cricket is the only thing you are ever planning to watch.

Its also pretty much the same amount as i paid for one ticket for one day to the Ashes test at Old Trafford next year.

 

[Langeveldt]

^^^ Unbelievable

 

[Sehwag309]

And in North America, its all BIG $$$$

$160 Packages and 2 Satellite Co's in competition. It's not easy, schedule an appointment and it takes a while to aim the dish and get a signal AND wait the next cricket season is shown on another Satellite so you have to either keep your original or pay huge cancellation fees and then switch

OR

Webcast!

 

[SpaceMonkey]

well i guess im in the minority cos i much pref Skys coverage over Ch4. Never missed a ball on sky. It gets proper coverage over any other show when its on live. Good commentators (although Bob Willis makes me want to kill someone). They were the first to bring in Hawkeye i think, as well as the new slow motion camera. They'll continue to bring in new advances too cos they need to keep the viewers.

 

[Neil Pickup]

Sky and C4 brought in the slow motion and hawkeye at the same time IIRC.

 

[marc71178]

Anyway there is always the pub.

But how many pubs would show it?

Besides that, spending 8 hours in the pub is pretty expensive - doing it 2 or 3 times in a month and you might as well have got Sky!

 

[marc71178]

Its also pretty much the same amount as i paid for one ticket for one day to the Ashes test at Old Trafford next year.

Can't believe you're paying that much - my mate and I will boycott, and watch it on TV with beers in hand!

 

[Slow Love™]

Free to air sport is a thing of the past. Stop complaining, spend less time talking about it and do more work and you might be able to afford it.

Shut up, you elitist moron.

In Australia - much of overseas cricket in recent years has been shown on cable (which is fine, because free-to-air never covered the vast majority of these tours anyway), but the Ashes in England has for a long time been available on free-to-air. The 2005 Ashes are looking like they won't be shown on Channel 9 next year (or any year following), which sucks.

The only thing I have against cable is that, because it's market share seems a lot smaller here than in other places like America and the UK, the prices are substantially higher. With a young child and numerous other monthly expenses, it's just an extra service we can't quite entertain.