Owzat! as BT Sport bowl Sky a googly in TV battle
Australia tie up new rights deal for home series with broadcaster
IT’S not been a great couple of weeks for Sky Sports. Having lost the coveted Champions League rights to BT Sport, it was revealed earlier this week that the satellite broadcaster had also relinquished the rights to the next Ashes series in Australia in 2017-18.
On Monday, BT Sport announced it had signed a five-year deal with Cricket Australia to broadcast all of Australia’s home matches until 2022, believed to be worth around £16million a year. The rights include 35 ‘Big Bash’ league fixtures, as well as the women’s Ashes series.
“This is a significant blow for Sky Sports,” said Stephen Broadhurst, chief executive of SJB Worldwide, a sports rights agency. “Domestic football might be pivotal to Sky’s continued growth, which is why they weren’t pulling their hair out when, in some people’s eyes, BT overpaid for Champions League rights, but cricket has always been considered an important part of Sky’s portfolio. Losing the next Ashes series will almost certainly cost Sky Sports a sizeable number of subscribers.”
Earlier this month, Sky’s remaining links with snooker were ended when ITV4 announced that it will broadcast next year’s ‘Snooker Shoot-Out’, the popular one-frame tournament, for the next three years from February 2016.
Sky’s association with the tournament lasted five years, but ShootOut’s transfer to terrestrial television means that ITV are unlikely, initially at least, to be paying any more for the broadcast rights.
While most equity prices have suffered over the past few weeks in the wake of market concerns regarding China’s longer-term growth, Sky’s share price has fallen by more than 9.6 per cent since August 7, wiping almost £1.9 billion off the company’s market value.
Losing the next Ashes series will almost certainly cost Sky Sports a sizeable number of subscribers
I’M not an Everton supporter, but like many football fans of a certain vintage, I maintain that the Blues of Goodison Park remain a much bigger club than the Blues of Stamford Bridge in terms of prestige, tradition and, unarguably, league titles won.
Nowadays, of course, Everton cannot compete with Chelsea on the pitch primarily because they do not have an impossibly rich sugar daddy capable of lending the club £1billion of his own money and keeping it going when technically insolvent. So perhaps the week’s saddest news came on Tuesday when Everton’s promising centre-back John Stones, acquired from Barnsley for a little over £1 million, submitted a transfer request. Guess where he’s going?
Stones has received the ultimate accolade for a defender — being favourably compared to a young Alan Hansen — but if his expected £35million-plus move to Chelsea is completed before Monday, one wonders whether he will play regularly enough to develop into a top player. It seems unlikely.
Three years ago, another young Evertonian, Jack Rodwell, was lured by Manchester City for a £12million fee; though plagued by injury, the midfielder made just seven first-team appearances for City in two years before being sold to Sunderland last year.
Since signing for Everton in January 2013, Stones has made 54 firstteam appearances; he should savour them because as the league’s richest clubs hoover up promising players in a strategy designed to prevent opponents from getting their paws on emerging talent, young Mr Stones can expect to spend a frustrating period of time on Chelsea’s substitutes’ bench.