Ireland Cricket 2013This is an important day for Irish Cricket with a win in the Netherlands securing their status as World Cricket League Champions, their position as the best team in the second tier of world cricket and a place at the 2015 ICC World Cup in Australia.
We will catch up with Cricket Ireland CEO Warren Deutrom later in the week as part of our Leaders in Sport series but it is also a big week for broadcasting within the sport with the Ashes Series getting under way in England on Wednesday and a new deal announced to  stream the Investec sponsored series live on YouTube in 53 countries across mainland Europe and Latin America.
The England and Wales Cricket Boards’s official YouTube channel will host the live streaming as well as one minute highlights of every session.
Mainstream coverage in the UK is exclusive to Sky Sports who took over TV rights from Channel 4 and before them the BBC in 2005 and have a deal which currently runs to 2017 with an option to extend two more years.
‘Free to air’ coverage is provided on BBC Radio whose contract covers the same time frame.
Sky’s contract also covers online and digital but the You Tube deal brings the coverage to a wider geographic audience who can access the material for free.
So far this year viewers, including in England have watched more than two million minutes of content on the channel and it is clearly well suited to short highlight clips and the messages of support that currently dominate the site.  There will be features as well as behind-the-scenes clips and player interviews to keep the site fresh over the coming weeks.
“This is the ECB’s first venture into live streaming of cricket online, so is ground-breaking territory for us,” said David Collier Chief Executive of the ECB
“Our partnership with the ECB expands the reach of the Investec Ashes Series to new countries and to YouTube’s younger, connected audience,” added Stephen Nuttall of You Tube.
It will be interesting to see the kinds of audience the service attracts and whether it makes a financial contribution to the rights holders or whether issues emerge around the main broadcast deal.
Cricket could set a model for the GAA which is currently in discussion over the digital rights to its own coverage from next year.  With Google having such a presence in Ireland it may be able to open up a conversation about bringing coverage, possibly in partnership with existing broadcasters, to new geographic audiences beyond the existing online services.
It’s a question really of being able to let go of complete control in order to reach out to a wider audience and that is a conundrum which has yet to be fully resolved anywhere in the world of new media broadcasting.