CRICKET SHOWS GAA WHAT’S IN STORE
Given the treatment of cricket and its vastly improved coverage, GAA fans have nothing to fear from the satellite broadcaster
PUBLIC service broadcasters are not obvious underdogs. Organisations like RTÉ and the BBC are more commonly criticised for the extent of their influence and alleged biases, but sympathy grows in the shadows cast by Sky Sports.
It was strange to see the largest and most influential media organisation in the country discussed as a victim when the Sky GAA deal was announced.
This was not the first time a public broadcaster was treated as such in circumstances where Sky bought the broadcast rights to a treasured national sport. Six days before the clash between Kilkenny and Offaly becomes the first Championship game screened exclusively on subscription TV is a good time to examine the revealing similarities between what happened here and the deal Sky struck to buy the rights to all of England’s home cricket Tests almost a decade ago.
Does hearing an arrangement described as ‘an infamous sell-out and a betrayal of our national game’, sound familiar? The speaker was not an outraged GAA member but Dr Nigel Knott of the Marylebone Cricket Club. He was reacting to the news that broke in late 2004: Sky had paid £220 million to secure exclusive broadcast rights for four years to all of England’s home matches. They already owned the overseas deal, and the news that live Test cricket would no longer be available on terrestrial television in the UK angered more than Dr Knott.
Distinguished journalist Matthew Engel was then the editor of Wisden, the revered cricket publication, and he wrote in its 2005 edition: ‘We are talking about a situation where the overwhelming majority of the British population will never come across a game of cricket in their daily lives. Never, never, never, never.
‘There will be short-term consequences as sponsors drift away; the longer-term effects will take a generation to unfold. Some believe these could be serious. I think we’re looking at a potential catastrophe.’
THERE are important differences between Sky’s cricket and GAA involvement, the most important of which is exclusivity. For their huge outlay in 2004, Sky got everything: all live cricket coverage involving the English team in a four-year deal that has been extended twice since, the most recent agreement, worth a reported £260 million, running from this year to 2017.
Their GAA involvement is tame in comparison, with exclusive rights to 14 of a possible 45 Championship matches each year for the next three years, as well as dual transmission of the All-Ireland hurling and football semi-finals and finals. The second vital difference is the guarantee in legislation that the All-Ireland finals will be broadcast free to air – but this was once the case in the UK with cricket, too. In the late 1990s, the England and Wales Cricket Board argued they were fighting for survival. Interest in the game was sluggish and the ECB complained to government about their inability to maximise revenue.
They lobbied Tony Blair’s first Government to have England’s home Tests removed from a list of protected sports events that must be shown by a terres- trial broadcaster. The BBC had by then been showing England’s home Tests for 60 years, since their first broadcast in 1938.
Sky held an obvious appeal for the ECB. They had spent hundreds of millions transforming soccer coverage, while they had also built a reputation for estimable cricket output following a deal reached in 1990 to show England’s overseas Tests.
In June 1998, culture secretary Chris Smith removed the home Tests from the protected list and uproar ensued. The famous relationship between Blair and Rupert Murdoch was an instant source of suspicion, with the British government denying that Blair had lobbied on Murdoch’s behalf.
Sky did not make their move immediately, with Channel 4 sharing the rights with them in a deal made in 1999, under which Sky continued to broadcast overseas Tests and secured the rights to broadcast one home Test.
Channel 4 quickly won a name for the quality of their coverage, despite fears that the commercial station would fail to match the standards traditionally maintained by the BBC. They convinced Richie Benaud to join them as a commentator, a shrewd move given the esteem in which the Australian was held.
THE highlight for Channel 4 came with England’s thrilling home Ashes win in 2005 – just months after Sky’s controversial triumph in winning the rights from 2006 onwards. Their audience peaked at over seven million during the decisive Test, and England fell in love with its national game again.
Ashes victory, the quality of the Channel 4 coverage and the imminent departure of Test cricket from terrestrial TV screens all fed into a febrile atmosphere.
Sympathy grows for public broadcasters in the shadows cast by massive Sky deals
A Daily Telegraph writer complained: ‘once a byword for honesty and fair play, cricket looks to have been compromised by the men who claim most to protect it.’
Again, sentiments not dissimilar to these ones have been common in Ireland since the GAA announcement.
There were calls to scrap the Sky deal and list Test cricket as a protected sport again. ‘These are people in the commercial world,’ responded sports minister Richard Caborn. ‘They have to live by the consequences. The government cannot insist on sport being shown on a particular channel. It’s a commercial decision.’
A House of Commons select committee held hearings on the matter, and one of the ECB grandees who argued hard in favour of the right to negotiate with Sky in the first place changed tack. ‘There are people within the ECB who are not happy with the deal,’ said Lord MacLaurin. ‘If I had been chairman I would have tried to maintain the balance [between terrestrial and satellite coverage].’
However, there was not undiluted sympathy for the terrestrial broadcasters. The BBC were accused of taking cricket for granted, with an infamous incident in a Test between England and India in 1990 when the station cut from the action to go to the news. This was just about the time Graham Gooch was completing his third century on the way to a famous 333.
Demands for a renegotiation of the agreement with Sky Sports were never realistic, and from 2006 onwards English Test cricket was theirs. Their figures have been compared unfavourably with those achieved by Channel 4, and especially during the famous summer of 2005.
Yet they have won praise for some of the innovations they introduced, and in May they won their first Bafta for coverage of the final day of the opening Ashes Test last summer.
In twice renewing their agreement with the ECB since the initial compact of a decade ago, Sky have taken a grip on Test cricket that no terrestrial broadcaster can loosen. One early setback, though, was a failure to sign up Benaud, despite unconfirmed reports of a lucrative offer.
The veteran was a confirmed supporter of free-to-air sports coverage. ‘You know that what you’re doing is going into the homes of possibly millions of people and you’re being invited in as a guest.’
Irish homes must make space for a new arrival.