UK telecommunications company BT has confirmed it is interested in the broadcast rights being marketed by the England and Wales Cricket Board, with an eye towards a free-to-air strategy.
The ECB this month launched its formal media rights sale process for international and domestic cricket for the five-year period spanning 2020 to 2024, with media and entertainment company Discovery Communications reportedly among those interested in the tender.
An Invitation to Tender document has been distributed, offering media rights for all matches played under the auspices of ECB in the UK and Ireland, including England international men’s and women’s matches, county cricket competitions, the women’s domestic Twenty20 competition and the new men’s T20 league that is set to launch in 2020.
The process offers opportunities for all broadcasters, platforms and distributors to bid for live cricket, highlights and clips, for audio-visual, audio and digital use. Five packages of rights are said to be available, including one for exclusive digital content on social-media channels.
Discovery, which owns international sports broadcaster Eurosport, is reportedly set to challenge UK public-service broadcaster the BBC in bidding to bring live cricket back to free-to-air television and BT could now be set to follow suit.
The ECB is targeting at least eight matches per season from its new T20 league to be shown free-to-air and is said to have met executives from all major terrestrial channels. The chief executive of BT’s consumer division, John Petter, confirmed to UK newspaper The Telegraph that the company was “interested” in the rights.
BT’s pay-television operation, BT Sport, was expected to challenge rival, and incumbent rights-holder, Sky, for England’s Test matches and the majority of their and county teams’ other games. Petter, speaking to The Telegraph shortly after meeting ECB chief executive Tom Harrison at BT’s headquarters, said: “We’re interested in the ECB. We’re following their developments. We’ve clearly met with them. And we’ll be thinking hard around what to do there.
“We agree with the ECB’s analysis that cricket could benefit from being rejuvenated a bit in this country.”
BT Sport already has a presence in the cricket market having dislodged Sky as the live rights-holder for the next Ashes series between England and Australia in 2017-18. BT Sport secured the exclusive rights as part of a deal with the Cricket Australia governing body that runs for five years, from 2016-17 to 2020-21.
Petter added: “How we’re thinking about this (the ECB) is free-to-view and we’re including it in how we think about it digital as well.”
Petter said that BT will also consider bidding for the rights to the next British & Irish Lions rugby union tour to South Africa in 2021, which are expected to be sold after the forthcoming series in New Zealand.