It’s a tired sporting cliche, but the 2005 Ashes series between England and Australia really did grip the nation. For weeks, during a long hot summer, pub televisions and office radios were tuned to the cricket, which was broadcast free-to-air on Channel 4. An estimated 7.4 million people tuned in on a Monday evening to watch the climax of the final game.
This summer, England is again hosting a major international cricket competition. But instead of an audience of millions, England’s games in the tournament so far have been averaging just 550,000 viewers. They’re being broadcast on Sky Sports, for which a monthly subscription costs at least £38.
Contrast that with the Women’s World Cup, which is drawing in huge numbers. The game between England and Scotland attracted more than 4.6m television viewers, setting a new record for a women’s match. That’s partly because the women’s version of the game is growing in popularity as it attracts greater investment and buy-in from England’s big clubs, but also because it’s available to a much wider audience on the BBC.
Cricket fans have long blamed the decline of the game’s prominence on the decision of the English board to grant the rights of English cricket to Sky, which came into effect after that 2005 series. Since then, participation levels have slumped, and the sport’s governing bodies are constantly tinkering with the format to try and encourage more people to take an interest in the game. Next summer, it will launch The Hundred – a new format that marks a long-awaited return to free television for the sport. (It previously launched the 20/20 version of the game).
Formula 1 faced a similar conundrum when its deal with the BBC came to an end in 2012, due to cost-cutting measures at the broadcaster. It also opted to move to a subscription-only service in the UK, and races on Sky draw a fraction of their equivalents on free-to-air television. Channel 4 accounted for 65.7 per cent of the total F1 audience in 2018, attracting an average of 2.9m viewers. Sky’s paid coverage drew an average of 669,000 viewers.
Certain sporting events – such as the FA Cup Final and Wimbledon – have protected status and therefore have to be shown on free-to-air TV. For the organisers of the others, the decision on how to reach TV viewers depends on their priorities. It’s a choice between maximising reach and maximising revenue. Formula 1, for example, is a profit-making organisation – and in that context the £175m rights deal it signed with Sky makes sense, even if it has made it harder for the teams themselves to sign sponsorship deals. The English Cricket Board, on the other hand, has a remit to grow the profile of the game – although its television rights deal has provided much needed funding, it could be argued that it’s not in the long term interest of the sport.
On the face of it, sports organisations face quite a simple choice – make your event free, and people will watch it. But it’s not as simple as that. “It’s comparing apples and pears,” says Gareth Balch, CEO of data-driven sports agency Two Circles. “There’s an age-old debate around free-to-air vs pay television, but it’s also an aged debate. The world has moved on from a binary choice.”
Balch says the sports rights world is much more complex than it was in 2005, with people choosing to consume content in different ways. Yes, there may be fewer people tuning in to an entire cricket match on Sky Sports, but people are watching short highlights videos on social media, and consuming the content in different ways. For sponsors and sporting bodies, short clips and highlights can be just as valuable as people tuning into the whole event. “A first-time viewer is more likely to watch for three minutes than 33 minutes,” says Balch.
Cricket’s drop in participation also can’t just be attributed to the fact it’s not on television anymore – there are wider structural issues, such as the fact that some formats of the game take a lot longer than other sporting events, and the fact that it doesn’t have a gaming product as successful as the FIFA series to help drive interest in younger generations. Balch points out that the Premier League has been behind a subscription in the UK and many other major markets since its inception in 1992, and that hasn’t stopped it from becoming the most popular sporting product on Earth.
For sports with room to grow, like the Women’s World Cup or Formula E, being available to a wider audience makes sense, while more mature sports such as cricket or golf should in theory be able to reap greater rewards on pay TV. Sporting bodies that do opt to put their product behind a paywall can charge sponsors a premium, because they attract viewers with more disposable income. But with a clever mixed strategy, it’s possible to reap the benefits of both worlds. BT Sport’s Champions League coverage is a good example – although viewers have to pay to watch all the games live, the broadcaster tweets out clips and highlights during the game so that everyone is involved in the conversation.
The equation isn’t the same as it was in 2005, when cricket disappeared from terrestrial television – and it’s shifting again with the entrance of the online giants. Amazon has secured the rights to several Premier League games from next season, as well as women’s tennis, and Facebook has been investing in contracts to show Major League Baseball and Spanish football in various territories (although not in the UK).
These companies value data and attention as much as cash, and their pricing structure may change the status quo even further. “The FAANGs [Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google] are going to enter sport,” says Balch. “The unscripted drama of sport will create a premium.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
