The ECB recently issued a press release on a new media rights deal with Sky, starting in January 2025 and running for four years. Times passes quickly, Sideonblog is now in its second media rights cycle, the post on the ECB's previous deal with Sky is here. That deal, signed in 2017, was for five years and the new deal is described as an "extension" to that 2020 - 2024 deal.
The ECB's broadcasting deal is the framework for English cricket . It determines what cricket we watch, how the ECB is able to pay cricketers, how much goes to the counties and how much is available for the grass roots game.
The press release though is rather light on detail and what detail there is often misleading. Here are what I think are the key points together with my thoughts on how the ECB / Sky deal relates to some of the other developments in the world of cricket.
Show Us The Money
You can read the ECB's press release from start to finish and back again without seeing a single £ sign. Such coyness is a new development, the 2017 press release had 70 words of pre -amble before announcing that the new deal was worth £1.2billion over 5 years from 2020. This time we don't know how much Sky are paying. I've done some googling to see if there's any other clues/theories/wild speculation to how much the ECB will receive. This Daily Mail article indicates it's on the same terms as the previous deal but the BBC's coverage includes a line "The ECB said that the fee paid by Sky was up on the last rights deal, which was worth around £220m a year." (As an aside, it's good the BBC makes it clear it only has the ECB's say so for the increase - too many journalists spout ECB numbers without attribution.)
So we really don't know how much Sky is going to pay the ECB. Given the lack of information I think we're justified in having a guess and I'd guess the deal is indeed an extension of the former deal either at the same rate or with a small increment. If that's the case the ECB is in the uncomfortable position of having signed a fixed price, long term, deal in what has suddenly become an inflationary world.
Meanwhile in India
The ECB isn't the only administrator signing cricket media rights deals. In India the BCCI has concluded the auction for IPL rights and they weren't shy about saying how much they were getting paid. The IPL rights came out at a stonking £1b a year (give or take, bids are in rupees, converted into $ by other media and into £ by me.) making the IPL up to five times as lucrative as the rights to the entirety of British cricket. The new IPL deal is worth roughly double the amount paid in the previous rights round, a stark contrast to the ECB's stand still. The future has arrived and its Indian.
Flush from the media rights round the individual IPL teams have an increasingly global presence, buying rights to franchises in other markets. The expansion into South Africa has drawn a lot of attention but perhaps the IL_T20 scheduled to start in the UAE from 2023 is the more interesting / bigger threat. This will involve 6 franchises with 12 overseas players on up to $450,000 & with a time difference to India of 1.5 hours. Although it hasn't received much coverage it would seem Jonny Bairstow has already signed up.
Cricket's great divide is only getting wider. The BCCI runs the IPL, an international event with its own window in the ICC future tours programme, paying nothing to the ICC and next to nothing to the boards who allow their contracted players to participate. At the same time the BCCI won't release its contracted players to participate in other 20/20 leagues - the bully doesn't give you his lunch money. But international capitalism abhors a vacuum and as the IPL franchises become global operations it remains to be seen if they continue to accept the BCCI's India first and last policy.
The Hundred
The extension to the ECB's current deal shows the relative financial insignificance of The Hundred to UK broadcasters. When the ECB signed its previous broadcasting deal The Hundred was no more than a powerpoint presentation in the depths of the ECB marketing department. Now it has burst upon the scene and the media rights map of English cricket is torn up er pretty much the same.
An indication of The Hundred's current financial irrelevance is the way in which the BCCI and ECB sell the rights for their respective short form competitions. Let's say you are a cricket board with two products. One is fusty / dusty old cricket which is inexplicably popular with dusty, fusty old men who (also inexplicably) earn all the money and own all the stuff. The other is new exciting cricket loved by The Kids. One bidder might value the rights to old cricket, the other wants the edgy thrills we associate with The Hundred and big name players - like Joe Clarke. Logically you will sell the rights for the two types of cricket separately to allow each broadcaster to get what they value and are prepared to pay the most for. That beats what any one broadcaster would pay for the rights to both competitions. That's exactly what the BCCI does, selling the IPL rights separate from international cricket, in fact it goes further and splits IPL rights into streaming and TV deals. But the ECB does rights deals across all formats mixing and matching international and domestic cricket.
For UK TV companies The Hundred is like one of those free little drinks you get at the end of an Italian meal, you're quite glad to have it, but you wouldn't pay for it. The idea that the ECB could create a significant additional profit centre by selling the UK broadcasting rights to The Hundred doesn't seem to be working out. (It should be emphasised we don't know how much the ECB is getting for this rights round.)
Why Sign Now
The timing of the new TV deal is strange. The Sky deal is the framework for the funding of all cricket in the United Kingdom and was signed by Clare Connor current ECB chief executive. Prior to becoming ECB chief executive Connor's commercial experience was limited to two years as head of PR & Marketing at a girl's private school.
Richard Thompson, the ECB's incoming chairman, has a long and successful business career behind him including founding a major talent agency. So you would have thought it would make sense for Connor to hold off on signing anything before she could run it past her new boss. She is, after all, an acting Chief Executive so shouldn't be signing deals that have such deep rooted implications for UK cricket out to 2027 & beyond. And yet the ECB announced the media rights deal had been signed just three weeks before Thompson was announced as chairman and a full two and a half years before the contract comes into force.
According to the ECB's press release the new deal both guarantees the continuation of The Hundred until 2028 and a separate 20/20 competition. But as we are seeing, it simply isn't tenable to have two separate short form windows in a single English summer. Either one tournament has to be scrapped or the two have to be played concurrently.
I may be unduly cynical but from a distance it seems as if the ECB old guard, headed by Connor and Andrew Strauss (attends board meetings - but not a director, makes all the major appointments - but not a director.) had hoped to install an internal candidate as ECB chairman. When it became clear the counties wouldn't wear that, they slow walked the selection process and attempted to ensure that when Thompson was appointed his room for manoeuvre was limited. Hence signing a TV deal and trying to dictate the future of English domestic cricket through the Strauss led performance review.
Women's Cricket
The ECB is quick to emphasise the importance of the new Sky deal for women's cricket:
"As part of the partnership extension, for the first time England Women’s cricket will have a defined commitment, including two free-to-air IT20s. This represents a step forward in the commercialisation of women’s cricket and laying the foundation for future growth of the game."
Let's compare this with the press release issued for the 2020 - 2024 Sky deal which promised "England Women’s Internationals – 1 x T20"
One of the press releases must have been incorrect. I also had a distinct recollection the BBC showed two women's international T20 games in 2021. And it seems I was right. So the ECB's step forward is going from two women's T20 internationals broadcast free to air, to two women's T20 internationals broadcast free to air.
The misrepresentation is even more egregious when it comes to The Hundred.
From the 2022 press release: "The deal also extends coverage of The Hundred until 2028, with a minimum of eight women’s matches confirmed to be shown on terrestrial TV, up from a minimum two in the previous agreement."
The 2017 press release promises
"Women’s T20 competition – 8 x Live including Final/Clips."
Once again the ECB has leapt forward - by stepping sideways.
Men's Cricket
Under the existing agreement the BBC gets to screen two men's T20 internationals each year. I haven't read anything to suggest that this won't be the case post 2025 but couldn't find anything in the press release that spelt that out. One thing we will be seeing is more games in the T20 blast, with an additional 50% of games broadcast each season. In part though this will just reverse the reduced number of Blast games Sky has been showing since The Hundred got up and running. There will also be a terrestrial Blast highlights package - which seems like a good idea.
Overall though Sky's commitment to domestic cricket - male and female is a bit lukewarm. There is no mention of list A cricket, the County Championship or of trying to get a women's first class fixture list up and running. Sky has a strict 120 ball maximum when it comes to domestic cricket.
The ECB & The Modern World
When it signed the 2020 - 2024 media rights deal the ECB had a spring in its step and gleam in its eye. Admittedly it had come to accept that it couldn't rival the BCCI as the premier force in cricket that dream had gone to prison with Alan Stanford. But it had a guaranteed cash inflow and had a whizzy idea for a new short format competition to provide additional financial firepower which would give the ECB a role in any Test match free future.
But that optimism was probably no more realistic than the belief that Stanford would somehow allow English cricket and cricketers to get IPL style rewards and ask nothing in return. Rather than being the number two cricketing power the ECB is standing still whilst Indian cricket gets richer - it is the IPL franchises that sit at the BCCI's right hand and whether they will be satisfied with a secondary role is unclear. There's probably still a role for the ECB, even in club dominated football the biggest tournament is the World Cup and national and international governing bodies persist. But it increasingly looks as if the future ECB will have to be a smaller organisation and more focussed on listening and building consensus than commanding the heights of English cricket.
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