The Nine network has issued a warning to Ten for the upcoming TV rights negotiations with Cricket Australia, saying that “Any future deal we do, we want everything”.
Ever since Ten paid $100 million for the Big Bash League (Australia’s domestic Twenty20 cricket competition) over five years in 2013, viewership has gone from strength to strength, with the shortened cricket format proving a hit with families and kids.
Meanwhile, the poor form that the Aussies have been showing of late on the cricket pitch has hampered Nine benefitting from its TV rights to international Test matches and one-day internationals.
According to Fairfax, Nine’s very own CEO, Hugh Marks, even said last week that “no one wants to watch the Australian team losing” and has suggested it would be uneconomical for the network to extend its current investment in broadcasting international cricket.
Furthermore, Nine’s director of sport, Tom Malone said on Wednesday that “Any future deal that we do, we want everything”.
“We want Test matches, we want one-dayers, we want [international] Twenty20s and we want the Big Bash,” he said.
“We’ve just got to try and find a way to make it work, but certainly there is a strong desire from the Wide World of Sports and from Nine more broadly to maintain our proud history with cricket.”
Fairfax reported that Nine is expected to bid strongly for the rights to the Big Bash League, which could go for as much as $60 million a year this time around.
