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Channel 4 lose Test Match Cricket to Sky (merged)
mmlabbd
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From MediaGuardian.com
"Channel 4 has lost Test cricket rights. The England and Wales Cricket Board has awarded the contract to Sky in a four-year deal worth more than £200m."
Well that's a real pain...I didn't want to have to subscribe to Sky just for the Cricket!!
mmlabbd
"Channel 4 has lost Test cricket rights. The England and Wales Cricket Board has awarded the contract to Sky in a four-year deal worth more than £200m."
Well that's a real pain...I didn't want to have to subscribe to Sky just for the Cricket!!
mmlabbd
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oh wait ECB and wisely in one sentence? :rolleyes:
Money is not the be-all and end-all of this. The ECB have missed out oin what cricket needs the of most right now - EXPOSURE.
We have a superb test team who can really challege the Aussies next year (luckily some of that will be on 4) but then that is that.
On a personal note, I don't care as Sky coverage is very good and I have it here, so I won't miss any. But if I was at the ECB I would look at the wider picture rather than just at the pound notes.
Even football realised that by not going exclusive.
i think the only mistake is not to get the T20 onto terrestrial somehow.
in some ways this actually seems better for working people (who couldn't see the live coverage anyway) as C5 will show the highlights in the early evening and not at midnight+ like C4 do.
TMS retains the radio rights, yay!
Its all bout money in the end
But this could jepodise any future sponsorship deal (get less money) for the ecb as vodafone wanted the matches to be shown live on terrestial tv, as they received a lot of exposure and will not get as much with Sky.
Yet again the British public are suffering for any success our nation achieves, thats the way it is in the business world tho.
I am not a Sky subscriber and have no wish to be. I shall just go without, and so will millions of others. I shall probably not bother with TMS on its own and my moderate interest in cricket will almost certainly dwindle to the point where I don't bother to follow it at all. I don't want to watch highlights, it's not the same. This decision means that it will be impossible for the majority of the population to follow the progress in real time of any cricket match and it must be a unique situation for any major sport.
I think the best option would have been for Sky and C4 to share it, like now.
What is on the list now ?
Football World Cup
European Championships
The Boat Race
The Grand National
Does the list still exist ???
I do not know what Channel Four Sport is up to. It obviously wants out of Horse Racing and now it has lost Cricket. What's left?
There's no question of it being on Box Office, this is just scaremongering. The contract states clearly that it must be shown on Sky Sports.
Some good news for James Murdoch to celebrate, for once!
CHANNEL 4 STATEMENT re TEST CRICKET RIGHTS
Commenting on today’s decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to award all live rights to domestic test match cricket to Sky Sports, a Channel 4 spokesman said: “Channel 4 made a full and substantial offer to try and retain the live rights to test cricket and to ensure that fans would still be able to watch the England cricket team free of charge. We were bidding as much per game this time as under the terms of the last deal, but we’ve still been substantially outbid by Sky.
“We’ve lost several million pounds a year on our cricket coverage ever since we took over televising the sport in 1999 and we simply couldn’t afford to take an even bigger financial hit. While we’re immensely proud of our coverage and are disappointed to be losing cricket from our schedules, we’ll be able to reinvest the millions we’re currently spending on the sport in other forms of programming.
“We hope the ECB does not come to regret its decision to turn its back on the hundreds of hours of terrestrial exposure that Channel 4 was offering.”
As a cricket fan I resented the 1030 starts just so that C4 could leave the Coverage for Hollyoaks on time.
It was a big inconvenience and often meant missing the start of play
if you were trying to get to the Match
I will look forward to be able to watch cricket and not a mixture of cricket and racing that C4 and BBC always had.
Sky will always cover sports several times better than terrestrial.
Name One Sport that has lost coverage because of Sky???
But I still remain curious as to whether BBC Television has given up on the sport altogether!
How long before $ky starts to lose money on these deals or do they already?
id prefer it to stay on C4 even though I have sky, because I prefer C4's coverage. but what youve stated is a load of crap. Why post?
that sucks !