James Sutherland has said Cricket Australia is open to diverting part of its overseas television revenue from India tours ot Australia to a central rights package bundle to be shared among all member boards
Daniel Brettig04-Jul-2016Cricket Australia total revenue figures since 2008 (from annual reports)
2007-08 (Sri Lanka, India): A$146,430,545
2008-09 (New Zealand, South Africa): A$115,825,592
2009-10 (West Indies, Pakistan): A$134,997,460
2010-11 (England): A$167,907,641
2011-12 (New Zealand, India): A$264,631,134
2012-13 (South Africa, Sri Lanka): A$168,392,766
2013-14 (England): A$295,897,820
2014-15 (India, England, World Cup): A$380,874,924
James Sutherland has declared Cricket Australia’s willingness to part with its multi-million-dollar Indian pot of gold as part of a collective effort to preserve the financial health of the global game.Following the ICC Annual Conference in Edinburgh, Sutherland, the CA chief executive, told ESPNcricinfo that CA was not alone in contemplating major changes to the revenue models based around bilateral (home and away) tours. Chief among these was the possibility of allowing overseas television revenue from India tours to Australia – worth up to $100 million extra to CA’s annual balance sheet – to be at least partly diverted into a central rights package bundle to be shared among all members.Such a change would be likely to cost CA money in the short-term, while also changing the dynamics around the board’s close relationship with the BCCI, a huge contributor to Australian cricket’s financial health. However Sutherland was blunt in saying that “doing nothing is not an option”, and said all boards had to look at “the big picture” of the international game’s future, amid worsening financial situations for some countries and the encroachment of domestic Twenty20 leagues on schedules and player priorities.”It’s different, isn’t it,” Sutherland said of the proposal to bundle rights for bilateral series. “You have to have a belief in the broader context and you’ve also got to see the big picture. I think together with pretty well all other countries right now we see that bilateral cricket is very much our core business and it’s really important that it continues to be popular. Ideally if we get to a situation where it has more structure around it, we build context, fans can understand and appreciate it more and we can increase the value and appeal of bilateral cricket.”We’ve got a very open mind and we believe in a big-picture sense that the benefits will flow, not only to us but to others. It may well be we go backwards before we go forwards, we don’t know, but we do believe in the big picture and we do believe individual countries can’t operate in isolation of everyone else. That’s something we’re very conscious of and that’s why we support the work the ICC has done so far in reviewing the structure of bilateral cricket and how that might all work. It’ll be good for the game, that’s our foremost position, and hopefully down the track it’ll be good for cricket in Australia.”Sutherland’s words are a world away from CA’s actions eight years ago during the “Monkeygate” furore, when Australia’s players felt let down when the board elected to avoid the risk of India flying home from the 2007-08 tour rather than backing Andrew Symonds against Harbhajan Singh. However since that time CA has worked assiduously to become more financially independent, raising a second major revenue stream from the Big Bash League and reforming governance to better advance the interests of the game in total.As a member of the ICC working committee exploring the commercial implications of changes to bilateral tours, Sutherland said he was encouraged by how much willingness he saw in Edinburgh to reform the structure of the game. Further talks are set to be held in late August or early September, before a more detailed model is presented to the ICC board in October.”I think we’re getting to a stage of really getting down to a bit of detail now of what it all looks like and how it works,” he said. “We’re hoping to have some meetings next month where we get everyone together to talk a bit more about it. The pleasing thing is there’s some genuine momentum here on this and strong alignment and will to make some meaningful decisions. That’s going to be good for the game and hopefully that will happen in the next little while. Everyone is strongly aligned and I’m confident we’re heading in the right direction here.”Everyone is firmly of the view that doing nothing around the structure is not an option, and about building more context around international bilateral competition. How it unfolds in regard to exploitation of rights and all of that is something individual members will need to make some decisions on, but it does follow that there are opportunities perhaps to do things better and differently on a collective basis rather than on an individual basis.”That sort of stuff is not a necessity, people could opt in or opt out of that opportunity; the bundling of rights may well deliver greater value but it will almost certainly deliver greater flexibility and capacity for member countries to generate media and digital assets that can help make the game more accessible for fans. That’s ultimately what we should all be about.”The models being currently discussed will include a certain weighting for the value of each country’s overseas rights, meaning that the likes of India, Australia and England will still get a share somewhat proportionate to their financial contribution. It will also be possible to schedule bilateral tours outside of the proposed league structures, meaning the Ashes or Border-Gavaskar series could still take place if the teams found themselves in different divisions.However the days of countries being financially tied to the BCCI for their very survival, and thus in lockstep when voting on issues at the ICC board table, may soon make way for a more equitable future, in line with governance changes also in the works. “The share of the revenues will still be somewhat proportionate one way or the other to the contribution,” Sutherland said. “If one country, India for example, their contribution to that total pie is greater than someone else they’ll get a benefit from that in a proportional sense.”But what it should allow is for other countries, who aren’t as strong or don’t have as much power and are effectively selling their rights in competition against other countries, to be a part of a bundle that helps increase the value by virtue of context and structure that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to achieve. That’s all about everyone helping each other to get a better outcome.”
