Stephen Bailey
Executive member
Originally posted on Channel 4 cricket forums.
'The ECB meet next week to discuss the new TV Deal with Sky Sports - sadly - favourites. It's not too late, of course, to contact the ECB...
[email protected]
[email protected]
From todays Birmingham Evening Post...
The Pat Murphy Column Dec 7 2004
* Cricket will die on Sky
Neil Houghton, the chairman of Warwickshire CCC and his counterpart at Worcester-shire John Elliott are both genial, approachable men who have the interests of English cricket at heart.
That's why you'll be perfectly entitled to give either of them a serious earbashing if you meet up with them over the next week or so.
At stake is the ability of the English game to reach out to younger generations who might be tempted to give up on cricket and find alternative sporting or social entertainment.
That's because the county chairmen, along with the big cheeses at the England and Wales Cricket Board are being sorely tempted to take a lot of money to enrich English cricket in the short-term without thinking through the consequences.
Very soon the England & Wales Cricket Board will announce who has won the exclusive TV rights for the next three years, starting from the summer of 2006.
The smart money is on Sky Sports snaffling four Tests, rather than the one they are granted under the present deal. That will cut Channel 4's coverage of Tests per summer by half - possibly just the last three Tests.
With Sky having vacuumed up all the one-day internationals, the domestic and international Twenty20 matches and all the county games, terrestrial television will be left with a handful of days over five months. And their coverage won't start until near the end of July and with the school holidays just around the corner, the product won't be geared towards future generations for the rest of the summer.
The chairmen don't seem too exercised by this. They're looking at the short-term, the dosh.
Sky Sports tend to grab what they want, because they can afford it. Various vulnerable sports have succumbed to Sky's generous cheque book and lived to regret it.
Whatever happened to professional boxing in this country? Around ten million watched Nigel Benn fight Chris Eubank on ITV - Sky managed 600,000 for Frank Bruno versus Mike Tyson, a more compelling contest on the face of it.
Boxing has disappeared out of the national consciousness and in the newspapers because it's been marginalised by Sky's monopoly. Rugby League has gone the same way, even being forced to switch from summer to winter at the behest of the TV moguls, while Rugby Union's Five Nations competition also suffered a lack of exposure and displeasure from the main sponsors before returning to terrestrial television.
Imagine the dreadful prospect of not being able to see last year's World Cup Final in Sydney because it was on satellite television!
The ECB trousered ?147 million for the last three-year deal that involved Sky and Channel 4 and from
that the counties got around ?1.3 million each per year. Now, with the England side on a roll and the Test Match product an attractive one, the ECB bean counters want more.
I understand that they have asked Channel 4 for around ?3 million per Test and that's out of their reach. But not that of Sky Sports.
Sky Sports don't reveal their viewing figures for England cricket matches. I wonder why? They're very keen to trumpet how many watch Manchester United v Arsenal, as their unrivalled marketing drum is beaten vigorously. They go all coy about the cricket figures because they are poor.
For a typical National League one-day match, they'll get around 20,000 viewers, a derisory figure. It's football that turns Sky on, not cricket.
What would the county chairmen do with the extra money stemming from a deal that favours Sky? Invest wisely in youth development and academies?
Or enter the transfer market for players, gullibly throwing money at knack-ered overseas stars with no interest in a county's welfare, but heeding the siren song of their grasping agents? No prizes for getting the right answer.
In recent years, the bulk of the counties have been greedy and short-sighted in pursuing players with dubious qualifications who do nothing for the future of the English game.
They inspire no confidence that as a body they are truly concerned about the game in this country ten years on.
If they did, they'd insist that the ECB awards coverage of Twenty20 games to terrestrial TV, so that youngsters could watch it free-toair rather than in the Sky Sports ghetto. After all, everyone says that is the form of cricket to attract the future devotees.
In Australia, all the oneday internationals and Tests are free-to-air, one of the reasons why cricket is the most popular sport in that country.
Informed administrators out there reckon that the game in England will wither and die over the next couple of decades if TV coverage is marginalised for a few extra quid.
Giles Clarke, the chairman of Somerset, is heading the ECB's negotiating team and the decision will be made soon.
If you don't want to see our major summer sport off terrestrial screens until the season's nearly over, I'm sure he'd be interested in your views, c/o the County Ground at Taunton. And I'm sure you know where to find the chairmen of Warwickshire and Worcestershire.
Major sporting decisions are often taken by stealth. Why not try to buck the trend with this one?
You'll be the ones affected by this decision, especially parents who want their children to grow up loving cricket and don't see why they have to pay through the nose to watch it on the telly.
http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/0200sport/globalsport/tm_objectid=14951837&method=full&siteid=50002&headline=the-pat-murphy-column-name_page.html'
I also put this on the cricket section on Codemasters to get response from the people it effects and to try and get people to send e-mails the ECB giving them their feelings.
I hope people here do the same. It is disgusting the ECB could possibly fall for the millions of BSkyB after what has happened to many sports after they fell for it.
Another good piece on the Deal
Guardian on TV deal
Here are addresses you can use to get in contact with people that will matter with the deal.
David Morgan - [email protected]
Tom Harrison - [email protected]
Richard Caborn - [email protected]
'The ECB meet next week to discuss the new TV Deal with Sky Sports - sadly - favourites. It's not too late, of course, to contact the ECB...
[email protected]
[email protected]
From todays Birmingham Evening Post...
The Pat Murphy Column Dec 7 2004
* Cricket will die on Sky
Neil Houghton, the chairman of Warwickshire CCC and his counterpart at Worcester-shire John Elliott are both genial, approachable men who have the interests of English cricket at heart.
That's why you'll be perfectly entitled to give either of them a serious earbashing if you meet up with them over the next week or so.
At stake is the ability of the English game to reach out to younger generations who might be tempted to give up on cricket and find alternative sporting or social entertainment.
That's because the county chairmen, along with the big cheeses at the England and Wales Cricket Board are being sorely tempted to take a lot of money to enrich English cricket in the short-term without thinking through the consequences.
Very soon the England & Wales Cricket Board will announce who has won the exclusive TV rights for the next three years, starting from the summer of 2006.
The smart money is on Sky Sports snaffling four Tests, rather than the one they are granted under the present deal. That will cut Channel 4's coverage of Tests per summer by half - possibly just the last three Tests.
With Sky having vacuumed up all the one-day internationals, the domestic and international Twenty20 matches and all the county games, terrestrial television will be left with a handful of days over five months. And their coverage won't start until near the end of July and with the school holidays just around the corner, the product won't be geared towards future generations for the rest of the summer.
The chairmen don't seem too exercised by this. They're looking at the short-term, the dosh.
Sky Sports tend to grab what they want, because they can afford it. Various vulnerable sports have succumbed to Sky's generous cheque book and lived to regret it.
Whatever happened to professional boxing in this country? Around ten million watched Nigel Benn fight Chris Eubank on ITV - Sky managed 600,000 for Frank Bruno versus Mike Tyson, a more compelling contest on the face of it.
Boxing has disappeared out of the national consciousness and in the newspapers because it's been marginalised by Sky's monopoly. Rugby League has gone the same way, even being forced to switch from summer to winter at the behest of the TV moguls, while Rugby Union's Five Nations competition also suffered a lack of exposure and displeasure from the main sponsors before returning to terrestrial television.
Imagine the dreadful prospect of not being able to see last year's World Cup Final in Sydney because it was on satellite television!
The ECB trousered ?147 million for the last three-year deal that involved Sky and Channel 4 and from
that the counties got around ?1.3 million each per year. Now, with the England side on a roll and the Test Match product an attractive one, the ECB bean counters want more.
I understand that they have asked Channel 4 for around ?3 million per Test and that's out of their reach. But not that of Sky Sports.
Sky Sports don't reveal their viewing figures for England cricket matches. I wonder why? They're very keen to trumpet how many watch Manchester United v Arsenal, as their unrivalled marketing drum is beaten vigorously. They go all coy about the cricket figures because they are poor.
For a typical National League one-day match, they'll get around 20,000 viewers, a derisory figure. It's football that turns Sky on, not cricket.
What would the county chairmen do with the extra money stemming from a deal that favours Sky? Invest wisely in youth development and academies?
Or enter the transfer market for players, gullibly throwing money at knack-ered overseas stars with no interest in a county's welfare, but heeding the siren song of their grasping agents? No prizes for getting the right answer.
In recent years, the bulk of the counties have been greedy and short-sighted in pursuing players with dubious qualifications who do nothing for the future of the English game.
They inspire no confidence that as a body they are truly concerned about the game in this country ten years on.
If they did, they'd insist that the ECB awards coverage of Twenty20 games to terrestrial TV, so that youngsters could watch it free-toair rather than in the Sky Sports ghetto. After all, everyone says that is the form of cricket to attract the future devotees.
In Australia, all the oneday internationals and Tests are free-to-air, one of the reasons why cricket is the most popular sport in that country.
Informed administrators out there reckon that the game in England will wither and die over the next couple of decades if TV coverage is marginalised for a few extra quid.
Giles Clarke, the chairman of Somerset, is heading the ECB's negotiating team and the decision will be made soon.
If you don't want to see our major summer sport off terrestrial screens until the season's nearly over, I'm sure he'd be interested in your views, c/o the County Ground at Taunton. And I'm sure you know where to find the chairmen of Warwickshire and Worcestershire.
Major sporting decisions are often taken by stealth. Why not try to buck the trend with this one?
You'll be the ones affected by this decision, especially parents who want their children to grow up loving cricket and don't see why they have to pay through the nose to watch it on the telly.
http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/0200sport/globalsport/tm_objectid=14951837&method=full&siteid=50002&headline=the-pat-murphy-column-name_page.html'
I also put this on the cricket section on Codemasters to get response from the people it effects and to try and get people to send e-mails the ECB giving them their feelings.
I hope people here do the same. It is disgusting the ECB could possibly fall for the millions of BSkyB after what has happened to many sports after they fell for it.
Another good piece on the Deal
Guardian on TV deal
Here are addresses you can use to get in contact with people that will matter with the deal.
David Morgan - [email protected]
Tom Harrison - [email protected]
Richard Caborn - [email protected]
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