England tour of India

[Red Devil]

Great news for cricket in Eng that this series will be free to watch on TV on channel 4 which will hopefully mean that lots of youngsters will be watching cricket

Is it? That is pretty amazing

I know! Maybe I can stop paying for skysports and btsport now!

[Arthur Crabtree]

Great news for cricket in Eng that this series will be free to watch on TV on channel 4 which will hopefully mean that lots of youngsters will be watching cricket

Wow! I'll make an effort then to watch this.

[sussexpob]

Have sky given up on cricket then? Id have thought series v India/Australia are the big ones for them, not to bid on it with the rights decided a couple of days before seems very weird. If this is a new direction for sky, it's great for the game, but I do fear in the short term what the ECB will do with without the money

[sussexpob]

I also just realised this probably means listening to Boycott for hours.

[Durhamfootman]

the good news is that I think Boycott has packed it in

[Durhamfootman]

of course Channel 4 might bring back the oleaginous Mark Nicholas

[Durhamfootman]

Great news for cricket in Eng that this series will be free to watch on TV on channel 4 which will hopefully mean that lots of youngsters will be watching cricket

is this highlights, Red or live coverage?

[sussexpob]

They have bought the out and out rights and paid a pretty penny for them, so I guess it will be shown live for every ball.

In fact looking at the cost, they paid nearly 25 million for the series, which is the same cost C4 pay per year to produce the Bake Off; and a simple look at viewing figures shows that Bake Off destroys C4 record viewing figures for a series, and each of its spin offs also account for its most watched programmes. 11 million people watch each episode, and then the American version has 9 million.

Its hard to see how C4 could justify paying that much money for cricket when they return 100s of million views on the same budget elsewhere, and due to timings I doubt cricket will hit anything near that. Certainly a bold move.

I mean, I wonder how many series of Peep Show or Inbetweeners you can make for that much? And Peep show sold 2 million DVDs, the Inbetweeners Movie made 100 million at the box office from a budget of 2 million. Makes zero commercial sense unless its simply a project they arent that bothered about making money off, just to bring sport back to TV.

[sussexpob]

In fact, it doesnt really make much sense from the perspective of the Indian rights holders to have sold this to C4 either. One of the reasons why SKY and BT didnt bid for the rights was the massive costs being demanded, the reason being that Disney who own the rights to Indian cricket content now were going to use this series as part of their much celebrated addition of Star/Hotstar to Disney Plus around the world, or using it in the form of their ownership with ESPN to connect to the Indian diaspora around the world and sell streaming packages on the content.

Maybe the launch of that platform has been delayed, but it was supposed to be coming now. So taking away that content when they made so much about wanting to keep it to exploit doesnt make much sense.

[Durhamfootman]

well lets hope so SP. I doubt the ECB are interested enough in the long term health of the the game that they are the guardians of if that long term health costs them some money, so Ch4 are probably taking a big gamble on a series not called 'the ashes'

[sussexpob]

It does leave you wondering what the future has in store either way. Sky not paying the price is interesting for a marquee team like India, especially when Amazon Prime have been clear that they want to compete to show the Ashes next year. Maybe its the end of Sky dominating coverage, and I wonder how many subscribers pay the frankly ridiculous monthly charges as the big streamers strip content from them, then front up massive entertainment catalogues for a fraction of the price.

I mean if this was on Disney Plus this time round, I could sign up for a month at 6 Euros, then cancel it after the series.... and with that I would get a huge library of series and films to watch too.

What does sky cost? 100 quid a month with all the sports? No contest.

[Durhamfootman]

Is the fact that the first 2 matches start at 4am GMT a factor in all this?

[sussexpob]

Is the fact that the first 2 matches start at 4am GMT a factor in all this?

It might be a reason why SKY and BT sports wouldnt pay a lot for it, but such assessments also highlight the price C4 paid. I guess if Disney Plus had put it on Star it would be to target worldwide audiences in various time zones outside India (because they already had the rights for inside India which wouldnt have changed their approach)...

[sussexpob]

One thing I didnt know is NZ cricket have just sold all their rights to Amazon Prime from later this year.

[westoelad]

It does leave you wondering what the future has in store either way. Sky not paying the price is interesting for a marquee team like India, especially when Amazon Prime have been clear that they want to compete to show the Ashes next year. Maybe its the end of Sky dominating coverage, and I wonder how many subscribers pay the frankly ridiculous monthly charges as the big streamers strip content from them, then front up massive entertainment catalogues for a fraction of the price.

I mean if this was on Disney Plus this time round, I could sign up for a month at 6 Euros, then cancel it after the series.... and with that I would get a huge library of series and films to watch too.

What does sky cost? 100 quid a month with all the sports? No contest.

More like £50 a month max-I pay £78 per month and that includes broadband,phone line rental and calls. No doubt I'll be able to negotiate a cheaper contract when the current one expires.
Sky however no longer dominate sports coverage having already lost European and FA cup football and much of the cricket outside England.