Sky Sports activities will broadcast all World Cups within the UK and Eire underneath an unique eight-year deal struck with the ICC for an undisclosed sum.
The association marks the primary time the 2 organisations have shared a direct contractual relationship and types a part of the ICC’s drive to promote media rights individually in key markets.
There was no bidding course of concerned for the UK market, although. In a media launch on Friday, the ICC mentioned it had determined to have interaction straight with Sky, which has a long-term broadcast deal already in place with the ECB to point out cricket – each males’s and ladies’s – inside the UK.
It’s understood that relatively than a young course of, the ICC factored within the ECB-Sky relationship and felt it will be helpful to lock in a deal straight with Sky. The ICC believed that doing so would simplify issues from a manufacturing and advertising perspective.
Starting in 2024, the partnership will see Sky and its NOW streaming service maintain broadcast and digital rights for all males’s and ladies’s ICC occasions, together with ODI and T20I World Cups by way of to the tip of 2031.
Through the course of the partnership, Sky will broadcast 28 worldwide occasions, together with each males’s and ladies’s showcases yearly in addition to a World Take a look at Championship Last each two years and Underneath-19 tournaments. Three of these occasions have already been confirmed to happen on UK soil – the 2025 World Take a look at Championship ultimate, the Girls’s T20 World Cup in 2026 and the 2030 Males’s T20 World Cup.
“I’m assured this partnership can assist our long-term ambition to draw extra gamers and extra followers to the sport,” Allardice mentioned.
Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports activities MD, mentioned extra folks available in the market had been watching top-level cricket following the successes of England Girls on the 2017 World Cup, and the boys’s staff’s twin successes on the 50-over and T20 World Cups – they’re present holders of each trophies.
“This new direct partnership with the ICC signifies that Sky Sports activities viewers within the UK and Eire will proceed to get pleasure from each ball, run, wicket and catch from each worldwide match for a few years to return, and we’re all vastly excited to see what’s in retailer,” he mentioned.
The 2019 Males’s World Cup, hosted by England, recorded the very best common viewers for a cricket match within the UK to this point and drew the very best ever UK TV peak for cricket of 8.8m viewers as Sky shared the rights to the ultimate with Channel 4. England’s victory over Pakistan within the Males’s T20 World Cup ultimate final yr in Australia was the highest-viewed T20 match within the UK ever following an analogous partnership with the terrestrial broadcaster.
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