ICC planning to make changes in the sale of TV rights

The International Cricket Council, in a bid to add more relevance to bilateral cricket in terms of grabbing more eyeballs, is planning for a revised television rights system. According to ESPNCricinfo, the ICC is slated to discuss giving member board better value over TV rights in overseas markets. This news comes a day after news about revamping ODI cricket by introducing a league style format featuring 13 international teams.

Proposal were made by five full boards – England, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Australia – at the ICC chief executives committee meeting in April suggesting that once the current cycle of rights ends for respective full members, each board may place the rights to telecast its home series in overseas markets in a common pool into which other boards will also put those rights besides having the rights to telecast their home series at home. The rights in the pool will be sold collectively as bundles by a committee of full members and the profits will be divided and distributed in certain percentages to the contributing boards.

“The members are currently discussing how they might best exploit their commercial rights. These are not ICC rights that they are thinking of selling. There are no new competitions yet, and no commercial models have been developed by the members yet,” a source close to the development told TOI.

While the report claimed that BCCI was yet to respond to the proposal, the proposal is not likely to add as much revenue to its kitty as some of the other countries where a lot of matches tend to miss out on worldwide viewership. For example, Indian viewers have not been able to watch matches from New Zealand’s summer of cricket in the last couple of years, including Australia’s tour of New Zealand earlier this year which was Black Caps legend Brendon McCullum’s farewell series.

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In the current system, a board sells its rights to a broadcaster for it’s home audience, following which the broadcaster then decides whether to sell it to its counterparts in the overseas market or not. The board’s profit ends in its sale to its local broadcaster.