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ECB Media Rights Deal

The ECB has announced a media rights deal to run from 2020 - 2024 (i.e five years in total).  This is their Press statement

The deal sees the return of live English cricket to terrestial TV but only for 20/20, all tests and 50 over ODIs remain behind Sky's pay wall.  In men's cricket the BBC will show 10 games from the new domestic 20/20 competition including the final (which is good news as I think the original intention was that Sky would have exclusive rights to the final). There will also be two live, men's international 20/20 games on the BBC plus one women's 20/20 international on the BBC.

An interesting snippet is that Sky are proposing a cricket only channel, might that mean cheaper access for people who only want the cricket channel?

The ECB are claiming the total rights package (Sky plus BBC)  is worth £1.1 billion.  If the figure is correct it is a big step up from the existing deal.  The Daily Telegraph reckons the previous deal was worth £0.450 billion but in fact the uplift is even bigger than that.  The previous deal seems to have been worth £0.26 billion for the original 4 year term, with a subsequent two year extension taking the package to the £0.45 billion but for six years.  In valuing the two deals like for like you have to take inflation into account (I'm pretty sure Sky doles out the cash from 2020 to 2024 so some of the £1.1 billion is 7 years away.)  but even then the ECB is going to be earning twice as much from its TV rights post 2020 than it does currently.

Although the ECB gets a lot of criticism it seems to have got a good deal here, more revenue and a bit of terrestial TV coverage as well.  The question is what does it do with its new found riches, and I'll be posting on that soon.


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