England: BBC object to Sky World Cup deal (31 Jan 1998)

31 January 1998

BBC object to Sky World Cup deal

Mihir Bose

SKY Television are close to winning the exclusive rights to next year's cricket World Cup, which will be held in England. The contract is near to being complete but has not yet been formally signed and is believed to be worth £8 million, writes Mihir Bose.

The BBC have taken umbrage over the deal and made their feelings known to Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, saying that it is difficult to protect the public's interest when one broadcaster buys all the rights.

The BBC's complaint is despite the fact that a sub-clause in the contract makes it clear that matches must be sub-licensed to a terrestrial broadcaster. This can only be the BBC, since ITV have never bid for cricket and Channel 5 are unlikely to do so.

If the BBC do come on board, they will share live coverage of the final with Sky and show one of the semi-finals live. They are also likely to show around 15 other matches live and highlights of the matches shown live on Sky.

While the deal confirms Sky as the premier channel in cricket as it is in football, it will still mean that the BBC will show more live matches from a World Cup than they have done before, even more than for the first three World Cups in 1975, 1979 and 1983 combined, when a total of 57 matches were played in England, and with satellite television unknown, the BBC had exclusive rights but showed only a fraction of the matches live on their two channels.

The BBC's anger is due to the fact that they fear the arrangement between the English Cricket Board and Sky may be a foretaste of the type of deal they would like to do on Tests. Under present legislation Tests are listed, part of the 'crown jewels' of sport which cannot be sold to satellite television. Smith has appointed an advisory group of the great and the good to review the list and suggest whether any should be removed or added.

The group, headed by Lord Gordon, who is a golf fanatic and has strong links with Smith, includes such well known sports enthusiasts as Michael Parkinson, Steve Cram and Kate Hoey, the Labour MP. While the group have been circumspect in revealing their findings, it would be a surprise if they did not suggest cricket Tests be removed from the list in some way.

For English cricket, the deal means the ECB are near to getting £20-25 million for the television rights for the World Cup, a record for the sport. On Thursday, they signed a deal with Rupert Murdoch's Star and Disney's ESPN for the television rights for the Indian subcontinent, worth some £7.5 million.

Terry Blake, the ECB's marketing director and the man in charge of the World Cup, has also secured sponsorship deals with four companies - NatWest, Emirates, Vodafone and Pepsi - and when he finalises the deal with four other target companies it will mean another a sponsorship package of £15-20 million, making a total of £45 million from television and sponsorship.

After paying out to the other Test nations, English cricket should be able to keep some £18 million. Blake has always believed this would be possible because there is competition and wants Tests removed from the list so that Sky can be used as a potential competitor to force the BBC to pay more.

THE Football Association have come to an arrangement with Mike Burton and Gullivers Sports Travel for reserving World Cup tickets. Both companies are authorised tour operators for the World Cup and are offering packages for England matches. These are escorted one-day trips for the three first-round matches against Tunisia, Romania and Colombia costing between £595 and £695 each.

FA officials met Burton and Gullivers this week and, according to Burton: "The FA have not got enough tickets for England fans. They felt that our tour packages, which are aimed at the higher priced market, would be ideal for FA council members, club chairmen, directors, managers and county associations who want to go to the matches but can also afford to take up such packages. It means the small number of tickets they have can be kept for the genuine fans."

Each of the travel groups will reserve 200 such packages and, given the wealth there is in football now, should have no problems selling them.

ENGLISH cricket tour operators are breathing a sigh of relief that the abandoned Test was in Jamaica and not Barbados. Around 1,000 English tourists travelled to Jamaica for the Test while Barbados, for the fourth Test, has attracted nearly four times that number.

Also, while some of these tourists had gone only for the Jamaica Test, others have gone on a two-week package and now have back-to-back Tests in Trinidad.

Barry Dudleston, the former Leicestershire player who runs Sun Sports Tours and Travel, said: "If they booked a two-week package then they are all right, but if they only booked for Jamaica then there are problems.

"The Jamaican hotels won't give them their money back and the problem is finding someone they can claim from. The tour operators are not at fault, and if people go to the West Indian Board they will say it is not their fault and blame the Jamaican cricket authorities.

"This is not an act of God but human error, so you can't claim on insurance. That is the real problem."

But Dudleston feels that it is just as well the problems have emerged now. "We were worried about the Antigua wicket and had that Test been cancelled then we would have been stuck.

"For that leg of the tour most of the packages are two-Test packages taking in Barbados and Antigua and we would have had nowhere to go."

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)