Sponsor warns ECB have devalued worth

One of English cricket's leading sponsors has warned that the ECB's decision to hand over all live television rights to the satellite broadcaster BSkyB will lead to a reduction in the value of any sponsorship.

Speaking in Media Week, Kevin Peake, the head of brands at npower, whose £3 million-a-year sponsorship with the ECB runs out at the end of 2006, said that the TV agreement had totally changed the commercial side of the deal. "It's not even close to what it was on Channel 4," he revealed. "Our media agencies looked at the deal and the simple fact is that BSkyB has a much smaller audience."

Peake said that while npower would not move away from cricket, it would "become lower profile on Sky and so we won't pay the same price as before."

Critics of the ECB deal have always maintained that one of the results would be that the game would become less attractive to sponsors.