[IAN P]

About time too.


BBC SPORT | Ashes set for free-to-air return



Well, the home matches are.

[dazza74]

2017 they reckon

[IAN P]

Something to look forward to then.

[Ian J]

But at what cost to the funding of the game.

I can't imagine Sky continuing to pump as much money into cricket if they have lost the rights to the most important games and they will probably drop their bid quite drastically next time around

[hdsport]

Originally Posted by Ian J

But at what cost to the funding of the game.

I can't imagine Sky continuing to pump as much money into cricket if they have lost the rights to the most important games and they will probably drop their bid quite drastically next time around

Quite masses of investment in grass roots will almost certainly be cut back.

Quality/breadth of coverage will suffer. Ok Channel 4 (or more accurately Sunset + Vine) was very good at the actual coverage...but at the expense of cutting to racing even once finishing before play ended to go to Hollyoaks or something. The C4 bosses also insisted on tests starting earlier and earlier it wasn't too far away from being breakfast TV.

People make so much about 2005 but that was a freak audience... a great series and England starved of an Ashes victory for so long but like with the Rugby World Cup win the masses soon drifted away.

A better solution if you want some live FTA coverage would be to allow an FTA broadcaster to 'dip-in' and show the odd session live e.g.

13:00 Brief highlights of morning session
15:45 Highlights of the afternoon session and live coverage of the evening session.

I believe the BBC were interested in something like this during the last round of negotiations. This better suits FTA broadcasters schedules and would minimise the reduction in revenue for the ECB.

Anyway this is only at the consultation stage.