Colin Smith, of the LEK consultancy which is advising Cricket Australia (CA) on its next television rights agreement, said there was a danger of saturating the audience. “You’ve got to be really careful of swamping the game because that can be a real issue”, Smith said. “’The concept could be you give it a fillip to television audience in Australia and in the UK, that’s the upside of it. The downside of it is that it’s basically two series in a row – it becomes less attractive and there’s less public interest. In terms of how you promote, you’ve got to be really careful that you don’t get the market causing you a problem.” CA’s current deal with Channel Nine expires in 2013.
However, Smith said that the 2013-14 Ashes series occurring in the first season of CA’s next rights agreement was a bonus for the games powerbrokers, as CA would “start the new period with the highest television, because England, I’m talking about domestic rights, attracts the highest rights.”
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) said that there was a “massive wave of interest” and “everyone wants to see the arch-rivals meet.”
ECB marketing boss Steve Elworthy outlined the strategy of holding back-to-back series: “We want to break the cycle of the World Cup and Ashes arriving at once, get enough distance between the events, make sure the players have enough catch-up time and we want to protect the Ashes brand.”
The last time there were consecutive Ashes series was in 1974-75.