Scandal to cost game millions

CRICKET Australia and its embattled chief executive James Sutherland have gone from whip hand to clean bowled when it comes to expectations it could demand $1 billion in current broadcasting rights negotiations.

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 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 previous Monday.

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 official comment after the test team’s captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and rookie Test batsman Cameron Bancroft plunged the game into its worst-ever cheating crisis.

CA’s key sponsors, including Qantas, Magellan, Commonwealth Bank and Skins, all issued statements declaring their “disappointment” and “concern” for the precarious position the game’s reputation and future was now in.