Memorandum submitted by the Professional
Cricketers' Association
INTRODUCTION
The PCA is the trade union for and representative
voice of all professional cricketers in the first class game in
England and Wales, including the Team England Player Partnership
which protects the commercial and cricketing interests of the
current England squad. We have been asked to provide the player's
perspective on the 2006-09 broadcasting deal with BSkyB and Five
(and BBC for Radio).
THE PLAYER'S
PERSPECTIVE
Professional cricketers are the primary stakeholders
in the game as a whole. They are the product commercially and
the group most reliant on the commercial viability and success
of cricket and it is obviously of great and compelling interest
to them how the game generates its revenues and sustains itself.
The vast majority of our members play county cricket and, consequently,
have enjoyed television exposure only on Sky Sports for the past
six years except if they've been fortunate enough to reach a C&G
final at Lords. All of them have the highest regard, therefore,
for the excellent coverage given by Sky without which their exploits
would not have been enjoyed by any sort of broadcast audience.
In the international context, Channel 4 has
been a fantastic broadcaster and have pioneered coverage that
has taken the broadcast of Test cricket to levels we could not
have envisaged before their involvement. We are hugely grateful
to them for six years of outstanding coverage. Similarly, BBC's
Test Match Special programming rightly holds iconic status worldwide
and their TV coverage of the first year of the Twenty20 competition
made a massive contribution to the exponential success of that
new format. Nevertheless, cricket's relationship with its broadcasters
is ultimately a commercially driven symbiosis. We and our members
have never been under any misapprehension that the primary consideration
for a broadcast deal has been revenue, because it generates 80%
of our central income. This meant that the value of the deal has,
at least since 1998, taken overwhelming precedence over the other
considerations such as reach, quality, scheduling and accessibility.
This is not to say that these things are not important and that
they would not be valid points of comparison between bids that
were close in commercial terms, but that is in an ideal world
and that was certainly not the case in the 2004 process currently
being reviewed.
In recent months there has been a huge amount
of debate on this subject and we expect the committee will receive
many different views. The PCA can testify to the awesome difference
the increased revenue that has come into cricket since the list
B free bid in 1998 has made to our members and the fortunes of
English cricket. Since 1998, the increase in central revenues
has allowed the ECB the resources to:
1. Centrally contract England players with
the result that England have risen four places in the Test rankings
to become the second best team in the world.
2. Make unprecedented investment into National
and County academies to ensure a vibrant and successful future
for our game and provide outstanding opportunities at all levels
to young players and aspiring professionals.
3. Increase insurance cover for players
injured during their careers.
4. Massively increase investment in Community
Cricket through Chance to Shine and other initiatives that expose
many youngsters to our game, provide a positive influence in often
deprived areas, provide our members with opportunities to coach
and contribute positively to the lives and sporting aspirations
of young people and employ past professionals.
5. Increase our funding to enable us to
provide benevolent and charitable aid to past professionals who
have fallen on hard times.
6. Fund an excellent education programme
for professionals preparing them for a second career after cricket.
7. Ensure through judicious deployment of
resources that the England teams (including youth and women's
cricket) at all levels are properly supported and developed for
sustainable success.
8. Ensure a robust anti-doping programme
and drugs education programme that addresses and drives our efforts
to be a drug free sport and provide role models to the wider community.
9. Fund and drive the reintroduction of
cricket to schools with all of its health and welfare benefits.
A reversion to survival on considerably lower
central revenues would be disastrous in both the short and medium
term and would negate so much of the great work and advances we
have outlined above. Our primary concern would be that many of
our members would lose their jobs (County payrolls and budgets
are already strained), the professional game would become less
attractive as a career choice for young athletes (tempted by many
different sports with more money and better benefits) and our
ability to support our members in their post cricket career options
would be severely limited. Opponents of the Sky deal predict many
bad outcomes to the removal of cricket from free to air TV. Our
belief is that these predictions are far more likely to be achieved
by an outcome to this review that forces our game to take lower
revenues for our broadcast rights. Opponents of the Sky deal would
unfortunately, if successful, cause the opposite effect to that
which they predict except that they would be able to watch the
inevitable decline on free to air television.
The motivation and interest of the Free To Air
campaigners is beyond question and we recognise their valuable
contribution to the public debate. We have every sympathy for
those people who will not be able to watch England on TV from
next season for whatever reason, but the esoteric and commercially
unsustainable reasoning put forward by opponents of the Sky deal
seeking review of it do not attract the sympathy of our members
because they do not address how our members and the game are supposed
to cope in the interim. It is all very well to point to long term
(and perfectly laudable) aims, but it has little value if those
aims are fundamentally undermined in the short term by cutbacks,
redundancies and scrimping because central revenues are cut.
CONCLUSION
The PCA and its members are grateful to Sky
for bidding generously for the rights to broadcast our game. We
are confident they will do an outstanding job of it and that they
will work closely with ECB, as they have for many years already,
to expand the reach of our game. It is of course, ultimately,
in Sky's best interests for cricket to grow and remain attractive
and they will no doubt be as innovative in ensuring this happens
as they have been in their coverage of the game. Of course our
members would love to play in front of the larger free to air
audiences, but most of them outside the national team set up have
not done so for many years and most of them recognise the commercial
reality of cricket's situation and support the excellent deal
done by ECB on their behalf. We are also grateful to the Culture,
Media and Sport Select Committee for the opportunity to make these
submissions. Our final point is that the real opportunity offered
by this review is to address early the issues that will undoubtedly
arise in 2008 and 2009 when the next broadcast deal is negotiated.
In our view the inevitable sea changes that will occur in the
broadcast landscape between now and then will give rise to serious
challenges for cricket and all sports. For example, it will be
crucial to understand the differences between different methods
of digital content delivery; television, the internet, 3G and
new mobile technology and cater to these different markets in
innovative ways. The PCA/TEPP receives 8% of the rights and will
monitor closely how matters are dealt with towards the end of
this decade and this Committee should rest assured that we will
do all we can, as proactive shareholders in the broadcast scenario,
to ensure that the interests of our great sport, its supporters,
players and other stakeholders are protected and enhanced by any
decisions made.
23 November 2005
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