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#CricketAustralia#BBL
Here’s a long read on the potential privatisation of BBL & WBBL
🧵 THE BIG BASH THEORY
The idea around privatisation of the Big Bash League (BBL) is the topic of the week.
Cricket Australia (CA) took the first step towards this when they announced around 24 hours ago that Melbourne Renegades was becoming the first club to go through a sale process and that bids will now be invited from private investors for the Renegades with a view to the club entering the 2027-28 season under new ownership.
CA and cricket's most important stakeholders in Australia, including the media there, believes this move will pave the way for other BBL clubs to follow while taking into account that any further potential sale (like that of Renegades) will be considered under a self-determination model that allows each state member to decide the best pathway for its club and community.
Largely speaking, the general thought around all this is “privatisation must be the way forward and that's where things will head”. But are we also considering this from the investor's POV? Because getting top dollar out of this scenario is the endgame, right? In that case, has CA managed to convince the potential investor that this is the best way forward?
Let's chew on some of the facts that are in public domain already:
1. There's no commitment yet on availability of top players and that the BBL window will remain totally exclusive, apropos international cricket. In the business of cricket leagues, only two things matter -- a) availability of talent, b) Window. There's no clarity on either.
2. How healthy is the thought -- strictly from an investor's perspective -- that CA says future sale processes will be considered under a 'self-determination model' that will allow each state to decide the best pathway for its club and community. Is anyone seeing a problem with that or is it just me? Imagine BCCI telling state associations back in 2008 that each state was free to find its own franchise under a 'self-determination model' and find the best pathway for its club and community. In hindsight, would a 'to each his own' model have made sense? In fact, it is uniformity alone that can make things work, isn't it?
3. CA chairman Mike Baird says CA and its members "will maintain control over the most significant aspects of Australian Cricket operations, including international scheduling, player availability..." Haven't you already drawn the line here because "control" could mean several things.
Some phone calls, some general chats and some thoughts -- I'm putting all of these together to share a basic gist of what the potential investor concern is, at this point. Let me know what you think...
* A fragmented ownership structure could create an uneven league. At least that's how some people see it. If the privatisation process is conducted on a one-team-at-a-time basis, with individual clubs determining whether and when to bring in private capital, the BBL could end up with a mix of privately backed and federation-owned teams. How unhealthy is that? Won't it potentially create significant disparities in resources, strategy and competitiveness.
* The economics of the current BBL calendar remain a fundamental concern. The season is already relatively long and increasingly overlaps with competing T20 leagues such as SA20, with the potential for further clashes with the PSL. That puts pressure on player availability (on which there's nothing yet anyway), audience attention and commercial inventory. And to think that Cricket Australia is anyways so hung-up (rightly so) on its December-January home season. Remember -- the future cricketer is a migratory bird.
Continued in the following post below…
🧵 #Cricket#Streaming#MediaRights#Bilateral
(A long read — in two posts — for those interested in discussing cricket bilateral rights and its future)
CRICKET STREAMING, BILATERAL RIGHTS & THE ROUGH TERRAIN AHEAD
Cricket Australia (CA) has launched Cricket TV, a brand-new Direct-To-Consumer streaming service, with a full commercial launch apparently planned for later this year.
Initial developments suggest the service has been designed to extend Australian cricket programming to fans outside CA’s existing broadcast markets. The product is expected to combine live matches, highlights, documentaries and archival content — all on a single platform.
CA says the early-access service has already reached viewers in more than 40 countries. Google Cricket TV + Australia and there’s enough reading material available around this.
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There is a view in some sections of the industry that an owned streaming platform is of little value, and that launching one is a temptation most rights holders have given in to and failed.
Others are sceptical and worried it will simply leave a hole in CA’s pocket.
Well, truth is — time will tell whether this move benefits CA and whether they were strong enough to take the risk.
But given the current circumstances around bilateral cricket rights and their not-so-imminent future globally, taking some amount of risk to see what works — and what doesn’t — is critical, right?
How else is CA, or any cricket board for that matter, expected to understand the way forward if traditional broadcast businesses stop working in the near or distant future?
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But this thread isn’t really about Cricket Australia and its streaming aspirations. It’s about India and the BCCI.
What CA is thinking and doing today is something BCCI had first thought of doing 20 years ago.
Doubt many of today’s cricket fans would know what the idea was behind the launch of https://t.co/9eHVMf1BL8 — the Indian cricket board’s current website.
Back in 2006, BCCI had envisaged a future where this portal would host:
▶️ Streaming
▶️ Highlights
▶️ Archival footage
▶️ News and match information
▶️ Analytics
▶️ Merchandising
…and a lot more.
(I’m sure the moment Lalit Modi reads this, he’ll jump in and say — I was the one who thought about it first. So be it, because the way ideas began to roll into Indian cricket post his arrival in administration began to mean something.)
Coming back to the point, https://t.co/YbXMyjz5BX was supposed to be a lot more than a scoreline-providing, press-release-publishing website whose idea of ‘good content’ seems to currently stem from cricketers randomly talking to each other half in jest, or in-house Q&As being posted as if they mean a thing.
Frankly, https://t.co/YbXMyjz5BX lacks any kind of quality content.
But that’s not the point either.
The fact is, none of those boxes around streaming, archives, analytics etc. were ever really ticked after the launch of BCCI’s portal, which coincided with the launch of the IPL. And nobody has really bothered to look at it from that perspective in all these years either.
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Okay, but why is this important now?
Well, here’s why… 👇🏾
BCCI’s bilateral media rights come up for renewal in 2027-28, and the big question already is — will the cricket board retain its bilateral pricing?
If current broadcaster JioStar were to end up buying IPL and ICC media rights even at existing values, BCCI will either have to go looking for a new media-rights partner — because there’s little chance JioStar will invest 3/4th of a billion dollars once again in bilateral broadcast — or finally start investing in its own streaming platform.
An idea that was first thought about back in 2006-08.
Which is why this thread.
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Continued below (keep reading if you’re still interested)👇🏾
*Inside the world of IPL broadcast*
🧵 Let’s discuss #IPL#MediaRights.
There seems to be this notion among cricket fans that since the BCCI has never really gone out of the way to market itself from a media rights perspective – alluding to the theory that the board has rather preferred to wait for things to fall in its lap – there’s barely little or no expectation that they’ll do any different this time around (when rights go on sale again).
In the last 18 or 20 years, when was the last time BCCI went around trying to actually “sell the IPL on TV”?
Not since 2008 when the product was newly launched and Lalit Modi had to go around convincing investors that they could take a long-term bet on it.
Frankly, if you look at it from BCCI’s POV – it was never needed because a template was set for television and it served them well for close to two decades.
With IPL taking over Indian summer’s prime-time slots on TV, tech beginning to burst at the seams with the advent of OTT & internet TV, and large media organizations roping in cricket rights to either add to their subscription volumes or offset advertising revenues between properties – fact is BCCI’s plate was always full.
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Today, almost two decades later, when IPL is already a multi-billion dollar business, the traditional idea of broadcast has changed globally and AI has already captured the overriding narrative, what’s there to not follow or understand how things need to move forward!
While I do understand the sentiment around “when has the BCCI done anything to market itself”, the larger point I made in yesterday’s piece in TOI -- (https://t.co/gfbV2PpEhK) – is that perhaps the time has come for the cricket board to wear a business suit and go looking for business the way it needs to be done in today’s times.
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Here’s what Uday Shankar has to say on advertising in live sport.
“(Traditionally) Advertising used to be a relatively straightforward proposition. You had television, print, radio, outdoor. Then digital came along.
Now you have AI, search, social media, short-form video, creators, platforms, commerce, retail media and increasingly a whole range of businesses that can monetise attention.
So every additional player is taking a piece of the same economic pool.
And therefore, if you’re a traditional media company, you can’t simply say, “We’ll create another piece of content and sell another advertisement.”
The economics don’t work that way anymore.
That’s exactly what BCCI’s clarion call has to be — figure out who are those non-traditional players with the right appetite.
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Why? Is it because JioStar may not bid for the rights?
Certainly not. JioStar will bid for all big cricket rights and truth be told, they need cricket more at this point than cricket needs them. If the current “content-drives-subs, subs-drive-revenues, revenues-drive-business” game is anything to go by, Jio is perhaps more heavily leaning on cricket now than ever.
The reason I’m saying BCCI needs to start working on a Plan B is because now’s the time to start worrying about the future – a future that’ll only be technology-driven.
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Take the NFL for example. It has five primary broadcast partners in CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN & Amazon Prime that cater to Sunday afternoon & night, Monday & Thursday night football, so on and so forth.
Then there are additional partners like the NFL Network (inhouse), Netflix and YouTube for bundling, package distribution and shared content.
Collectively, the NFL earns US$12b per year (approx.) through media rights, and yet, it’s a constant exercise in learning.
While it is the granddaddy of sports leagues anywhere, point is, are we learning anything from the best?
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Let me rephrase my original question: What is BCCI’s outreach on media rights? Is it happy just relying on JioStar in exploring the right value or do they believe it’s time to look at what’s keeping the industry busy globally.
That’s the question.
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