It is highly unusual… especially when they’re tendering for the AFL rights deal.
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Yeah - I feel Seven’s best approach would be to lump it for the next couple of seasons and just not bid next time around or only go for exclusive rights.
It doesn’t seem a great message to send to the sports industry.
Cricket Australia would probably be quite happy to terminate the rights agreement but I suspect that may be too complicated given Foxtel’s involvement and the on-sell of certain rights to them.
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You’d think CA would be in a position to terminate, then counter-sue Seven for any difference in rights value?
Not the smartest tactic on Seven’s behalf when the AFL deal is being done. Hurts Fox too - Seven are their only viable FTA partner - Nine and Ten would both want to go for the whole thing and utilise Stan/Paramount+ respectively, so having bad blood with Seven and CA does them no favours for being able to keep cricket in the next rights deal.
I certainly think the BBL is a worse product now, but the changes that were made were because of the broadcasters - they wanted more games to split the pie, and TV friendly timeslots.
The only fix is a shorter season with an international window - so the Australian stars are playing the whole BBL over school holidays.
I suppose though some of the other reporting sounds like the teams think the solution is having the Sydney Knight Riders would mean there’d be a flood of those IPL bucks into the BBL.
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So this is the umpteenth time Seven is suing Cricket Australia for a deal that THEY THEMSELVES agreed to? I wonder if anyone is able to give them a reality check about this.
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Paramount has global rights to the IPL and a BBL-IPL partnership would reboot the league
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Go back to 9 or let 10 do it since 10 actually did a decent job with the BBL
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No, it won’t - Australia has little interest in the IPL and an increasingly waning interest in the BBL if CA isn’t careful.
The likelihood of this happening seems to be limited - the next tranche of the Future Tours Program should be out soon which will give us an answer
The addition of three other T20 tournaments in and around the BBL (In Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the UAE) is going to have an impact on available players and potentially attract Australian players given at least two of them are throwing serious money to attract players.
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This article has the view that the deal was a dud all along. plenty of people saw this coming mile off
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Some of the claims by 7 are tenuous at best. It’s as though they take no blame for signing a dud deal and claim they lost revenue from a poor quality competition.
Nothing there about how covid impacted it, the fact they wouldn’t have generated large revenues as it was a simulcast deal.
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The signs had been there for a while in the leadup:
- Nine had complained during the previous deal about the international summer - between poor competition and the weather risk, Nine were struggling fulfilling their commercial deals
- The Forward Tours Program that was known at the time of the deal was weak - the shining light was an Ashes tour and maybe an Indian tour
- Ten had been able to create a decent BBL coverage that was attracting good audiences, but there were warning signs that changing the structure of the BBL would have a significant impact on the quality of the competition
- Nine were unlikely to bid competitively after raising their concerns
- CA wanted big money, which meant there was a strong potential for Foxtel’s involvement (which would in turn temper the FTA exclusivity)
It was always going to be a risky move to go big - events post award of the rights haven’t helped matters either, but they aren’t the sole reason for the issues at hand. CA has overegged the BBL, in part thanks to greed from the broadcasters - more games and stretching the competition out resulted in people losing interest, and by the final people have BBL fatigue.
Blaming the quality of the BBL squads because they were decimated during COVID and trying to get a tournament completed to meet CA’s commercial agreements is a pretty shit move.
Blaming a lack of exclusivity is also a shit move - they signed the agreement fully aware of what they did and didn’t have access to. Rather than complaining, they should be looking at why people are paying to watch the alternate coverage and trying to build a better competing product. The early seasons of Seven’s coverage were lacklustre in comparison to Fox’s - its now switched as Fox have really taken their eye off the ball
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More here on the value of the next deal with more tests agains England and India in the next cycle of tests.
Speculates that 10 may consider picking up the dud BBL deal. Maybe that will put 10 in CA favor.
All networks expected to bid for tests in the next deal. Not sure CA would even consider any sort of bid from Seven after how they’ve treated the product this rights deal.
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Might be the only reason why they would. Then again we’ve seen that loyalty means nothing to CA so…
If they show the money, then they will.
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look at the test touring squads over the deal:
2018 - india
2019 - NZ
2020 - India
2021 - England
2022 - South Africa
Its been a very front loaded rights deal, and it seems 7 have had the cream (2 india tours, one ashes series) and don’t want the rest.
I think 7 are happy with the Test matches
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The Australian reports that Seven have presented Cricket Australia with a range of options for a possible extension of the existing $450m contract - but at a significantly discounted price.
Seven have offered three clear options to Cricket Australia:
- Seven drops the case in the federal court, fulfils the remaining two years of the current deal, and signs on for a further three or four seasons of Test cricket at a reduced rate, while offering a “baseline” figure for the BBL, giving CA the opportunity to shop the BBL to a rival bidder should they wish.
- Offer an all-encompassing deal for both Tests and BBL, but at just over half the price of the current contract
- Shake hands and walk away. Seven would drop its legal action and abandon its push for damages, on the condition it be released from the remaining two years of the current deal.
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These people are nuts. Who are they to sue and then offer things that will stifle the growth of cricket?
Sorry but you don’t get to sue then want to extend the test cricket components.
And it seems seven continue to be obsessed with these simulcast deals. They never want to actually get some sort of exclusivity so they can actually offer more viewers to advertisers and extract more value out of the product.
They want tests because they are just a relay station. They do not have to do production costs aside from slapping commentary over Fox’s pictures.
CA need to run away from this mob quickly. Hold them to the contract and flee quick smart. This has been a disaster of a deal. They should’ve gone with 10s $990m deal and ignored 7/fox.
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Seven is owed an Afghanistan Test from 2020. Not sure if that’s part of the claim but it’s worth $3m according to reports at the time.
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They don’t really care about that one.
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