Australian Cricket TV Deal relevant to Ireland
Value more than doubled since last five year deal
Joint Venture to cover Tablets and Smartphones
No match to hold the nation in thrall
TV SportThe GAA will be pleased to have been following the battle for domestic TV sports rights in Australia over recent days.
As the dust settles on a bidding war over the right to broadcast cricket, the sport is celebrating a payday of $590 million, an increase of more than 100% over the previous five year contract.
Channel 9’s victory, albeit with a rival broadcaster Channel 10 coming in for some coverage of the sport means that  cricket will stay on free to air TV, an important element in maintaining its appeal to future players, fans and sponsors.
In another factor that will be of interest as Croke Park continues to negotiate over a new three year broadcast deal from 2014, the station and Cricket Australia have agreed to form a $60 million joint venture to develop and facilitate the streaming of live matches to tablets, smartphones and through other channels.
Inflation in the value of TV rights across sport around the world has been rampant despite the recession.  In the US questions were raised over the purchase of the LA Dodgers Baseball team for $2 billion, at least until a 25 year broadcast deal was announced with Time Warner at a value of $7 billion.
The value of rights for Olympic Games, major international competitions and increasingly domestic sport as well, has continued to rise as the value of the live element of sport, and its leveraging through social media as a means of reaching out to consumers has been recognised as almost impossible to reproduce through any other medium.
Even though RTE is under pressure to reduce its spending on sports rights, these latest instances from around the world show that there is a sustained backing from the commercial sector for sports broadcasting.
The ability of a sporting event to hold the nation in thrall means that there is still some headroom in the value of broadcast rights and this will continue to be the case for so long as everybody from sponsors to broadcasters, fans to players emerge as winners in their various metrics.
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Sports Funding Round Table – June 13th
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