The Cricket Australia national governing body has unveiled a series of overseas rights deals, agreements which include the segmentation of its rights in Africa for the first time.
The agreements, which all cover a five-season window from 2016-17 to 2020-21, include an extension with SuperSport, the pay-television broadcaster that operates in sub-Saharan Africa.
SuperSport has partnered with CA for close to two decades but its new deal will cover the South African market only. Across Africa, excluding Northern Africa, CA has entered into an agreement with telecommunications and television provider, Econet Media, which will broadcast Australian cricket content through its start-up pay-television operator, Kwesé TV.
Both agreements cover international men’s and women’s cricket as well as the Big Bash League and Women’s Big Bash League franchise-based competitions.
Meanwhile in the Caribbean, after running a tender process, CA has renewed its partnership with International Media Content for a further five years. IMC’s SportsMax pay-television platforms will carry Australian cricket’s premium international content in the shape of Tests and one-day internationals, beginning with South Africa’s tour of Australia in November.
Cricket Australia will begin a new partnership with telecommunications company Cable & Wireless after the company secured CA’s package of short form cricket. Through its Flow Sports pay-television offering, Cable & Wireless will showcase men’s and women’s international Twenty20 cricket, as well as the BBL and the WBBL competitions for the next five years.
Cricket Australia executive general manager of media, communications and marketing, Ben Amarfio, said: “Our current and new broadcast partners are renowned for delivering world-class sports broadcasting and we look forward to them taking the game to more people in innovative ways. This is a very important aspect for us in our efforts to grow the game and was a major consideration as our broadcasting team completed these latest rights deals.”
Cricket Australia has also retained some non-exclusive digital rights which will see cricket fans in Africa and the Caribbean who are subscribers with Econet Media, SuperSport, IMC and Cable & Wireless also having access to live streaming of Australian cricket content via cricket.com.au and the CA Live App.