Scandal clean bowls rights bid
CRICKET Australia and its embattled chief executive James Sutherland have gone from whip hand to clean bowled when it comes to expectations it could ask $1 billion in current broadcasting rights negotiations.
Or as one industry expert described the post-scandal hit to Sutherland especially, as: “like a bloke that lost his wallet on Saturday, then his wife told him she was leaving him on Sunday. He got his wallet back but there was only half the money in it.”
As the CA boss scrambled to mop up the damage done by the national team’s ball-tampering admissions, media and marketing experts warned the sporting shame would come at a multimillion-dollar cost — including the price tag the game could command for TV rights.
A consortium bid by Channel 9 and 10 was rebuffed as “not enough” by the game’s board last Friday, after it was pitched to Cricket Australia executives Ben Amarfio and Stephanie Beltrame at a critical meeting in Melbourne on the Monday prior.
CA’s chief executive is understood to have been overseas and absent for those negotiations, in what remains the sport’s financial lifeline for the next three years.
TV networks, including Foxtel, are all believed to still be considering the lucrative broadcast and digital rights to the game, declining to offer of- ficial comment after the test team’s captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and rookie test bowler Cameron Bancroft plunged the game into its worst-ever cheating crisis.
But privately, many were seething at CA’s slow reaction to handling the crisis, particularly Sutherland’s arms-length approach.
It was left to CA’s key sponsors — including Qantas, Magellan, Commonwealth Bank and Skins — which all issued statements declaring their “disappointment” and “concern” for the precarious position the game’s reputation and future was now in.
A furious Skins’ executive chairman Jaimie Fuller was scathing of the CA Board in an open letter published yester- day, putting them on notice over “recent failures of governance.”
Urging the immediate recall of all those involved with the bungled ball-tampering, he warned: “if you don’t, it’s not just the Australian cricket team who is shamed. But it will be all of you. It will be cricket. And it will be all of us. It’s time to do the right thing. Right now.”
Andrew Woodward, a former global head of brand and sponsorship communications for Visa Inc., said sponsors would have managed the risk of being involved with sport, but would not have expected this shocking conduct from “Mother Teresa” Smith. “Cricket’s brand in Australia won’t recover while ever Steve Smith is at the helm,” he said.