Seven’s threat to pull out of the much-touted deal exposes its weaknesses as many games risk being consigned to pay-TV this summer
In April 2018, Cricket Australia announced a new television rights deal worth $1.18bn. Chief executive James Sutherland sealed the final negotiations that had been conducted by his head of broadcasting and commercial, Ben Amarfio. Given that it was a couple of weeks since the ball-tampering scandal that enveloped the men’s Test team, the deal was presented as a triumph for the sport. It was to be a new era, with the rights leaving the Nine Network for the first time since the 1970s, moving to Fox Sports and Seven West Media.
Skip forward to 2020, and the colours of that bright new dawn might have been caused by toxic clouds on the horizon. While CA tries to stabilise the sport in a viral world, Seven is blustering about abandoning the contract entirely. The network’s CEO, James Warburton, has made a series of aggressive statements that peaked with calling CA “the most incompetent administration I’ve ever worked with”. Seven’s next instalment of $50m is due on Tuesday, 15 September and the beginning of the season is barely a fortnight away.
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