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Cape Town - Cricket Australia (CA) on Thursday announced details of its broadcast partnerships in South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.
In South Africa, CA has renewed its long standing partnership with SuperSport, extending the relationship to more than two decades.
Across Africa (excluding Northern Africa), Cricket Australia has entered into an historic agreement with telecommunications and TV provider, Econet Media, which will broadcast Australian cricket content through its multiscreen offering, Kwesé Sports.
Both agreements cover international men’s and women’s cricket as well as the Big Bash League (BBL) and the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) for the next five years, starting with the coming 2016-17 season.
It is the first time that Cricket Australia has segmented the African territory.
Meanwhile in the Caribbean, after running a tender process, Cricket Australia has renewed its partnership with International Media Content (IMC) for a further five years. IMC’s SportsMax platforms and channels will carry Australian cricket’s premium international content (Tests and One Day Internationals) beginning with South Africa’s tour of Australia in November 2016.
Cricket Australia will begin a new partnership with Cable & Wireless after the company secured CA’s package of short form cricket. Through its Flow Sports offering, Cable & Wireless will showcase men’s and women’s International Twenty20 cricket, the BBL and the WBBL competitions for the next five years.
Cricket Australia Executive General Manager of Media, Communications & Marketing Ben Amarfio said the deals further cemented the vast array of interest in Australian cricket broadcasting.
“We’re really excited to renew with our long standing partners in SuperSport and IMC, as well as welcome new partners Econet Media and Cable & Wireless into the Australian Cricket family.
“The appetite and competition to acquire Cricket Australia’s media rights is a testament to the outstanding quality of cricket which has been consistently demonstrated by our cricketers and this continues to attract very strong interest for our game. We are fortunate to be partnering with such prominent companies who clearly value the quality of Australian cricket content.
“The growth of the overall cricket product offering, including the Big Bash League in recent years, has been phenomenal, particularly in the past 12 months.
“We are constantly looking at innovative ways to reach new fans around the world; it is very much a focus for us to ensure the game is accessible on multiple devices and we create greater reach and breadth of coverage for fans.
"Our current and new broadcast partners are renowned for delivering world class sports broadcasting and we look forward to them taking the game to more people in innovative ways. This is a very important aspect for us in our efforts to grow the game and was a major consideration as our broadcasting team completed these latest rights deals.”
Gideon Khobane, Chief Executive of SuperSport, commented: “SuperSport has long enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Cricket Australia, so we are delighted to have renewed our partnership. The standard of the cricket is only ever outstanding and lends great depth to the quality of SuperSport’s broadcasts.”
Joe Hundah, CEO of Econet Media, commented: “The partnership with Cricket Australia is a continuation of our commitment to bring great quality content to our audiences in Africa. A content offering that will appeal to all our audiences, and provide variety as diverse as our beautiful continent. Cricket is loved in Eastern and Southern Africa and we wanted to ensure that our audience in these markets would have an opportunity to enjoy the best action available. We are also excited about the opportunity to expose the sport to new audiences within those markets.”
Olly McIntosh, President and CEO of SportsMax, commented: “SportsMax, a member of the Digicel Group, is extremely proud to extend its long-lasting relationship with Cricket Australia for a further five years. This ensures for our Caribbean viewers coverage on the SportsMax channels of the best performing team in international cricket against our West Indies as well as the most watched cricket series internationally, the Ashes. We look forward to providing cricket from Australia on SportsMax and all the Digicel broadcast platforms to our viewers when, where and how they want it on existing and to-be-created platforms.”
James Tooke, SVP of Media & Content at CWC, commented: “Cable & Wireless Communications is extremely pleased to partner with Cricket Australia to bring T20 Internationals and the Big Bash to the Caribbean. This deal represents another huge win for fans across the region, as it brings cricket lovers closer to Australia's innovative approach to the game and one of the world's great T20 tournaments. At Flow Sports we are totally focused on ensuring we bring our customers exactly what they want - the best, the most exciting, and the most popular sports content available. With the Aussie men and women's Twenty20 Internationals, as well as the BBL and the WBBL competitions on Flow Sports for the next five years, we will be doing exactly that to confirm that we are truly the 'Home of T20 in the Caribbean’.”
Cricket Australia has also retained some non-exclusive digital rights which will see cricket fans in Africa and the Caribbean who are subscribers with Econet Media, SuperSport, IMC and Cable & Wireless also having access to live stream Australian cricket content via cricket.com.au and the CA Live App.
