If top-class sport is to remain popular, access to it must not be restricted to a minority, argues James Mills
England have won the Ashes. But while we revel in this cricketing feat, the reality is that there were probably more Australian than English viewers watching the Ashes series this summer. This is due to the fact that they are guaranteed free live sports on their terrestrial television channels such as SBS (the Australian version of Channel 4) through anti-siphoning legislation. This prevents programming being the wholesale property of pay-per-view TV companies.
That England’s summer success was exclusive to Sky Sports was extremely problematic for followers of English cricket who decline to give their money to Rupert Murdoch. And they are not just the English. When I lived in Scotland I was surprised by how many Scots I knew who wished the worst for England at rugby and football, yet followed England at cricket. One colleague at work used to travel to Yorkshire whenever a test was being played at Headingley. I even met a student SNP activist who admitted that he supported England. It would be interesting to know how many newsletters the England and Wales Cricket Board send north of the border every year. And it isn’t just the Scots. Many of my Irish relatives also follow England when it comes to cricket and were cheering on last month’s clinching victory at the Oval.
There is a large terrestrial audience across the United Kingdom for live major sporting events such as the Ashes. When Channel 4 showed the 2005 Ashes series, as many as 19 million were watching the third Test. A staggering 23 million tuned in at one point to watch the final Test at the Oval.
This year Channel 5 had the rights to broadcast highlights of the Ashes series and a peak of 1.4 million viewers tuned to watch. Compare that with the figures for Sky’s live coverage, which averaged well under a million. For some England Tests on Sky, the audience has been as low as 200,000. Even Sky’s highest recorded viewing figures for cricket, the 1.5 million people who witnessed England’s defeat of India during the Twenty20 World Cup, was nowhere near the numbers Channel 4 used to attract.
Yet the British public love live sporting events. For example, 11 million people watched the men’s singles final at Wimbledon in June this year. Sky Sports, with its total of
8 million subscribers, can never dream of such audiences even though it now owns the rights to the cream of many British sporting events.
Some major sporting events are protected by the A-list and have to been shown on free-to-air TV. These include football’s World Cup and European Championship finals (but not the qualifying rounds), the Olympic Games, the tennis at Wimbledon and the Grand National. Test match cricket use to be on the list, but was removed from it in 1999. Post 2006, the ECB sold all live cricket coverage to Sky.
However, in December last year, the Government asked David Davis, the former executive director of the Football Association, to chair a panel reviewing the listed sporting events made available to free-to-air TV. The panel are set to report back to ministers at the Department for Culture Media & Sport this autumn. It has a mandate to recommend sporting events that should be added or removed from the list and may even suggest that the list be terminated altogether. But the final say resides with the Government. So here is an opportunity for Labour to take the initiative on a vital issue.
Although the next home Ashes series in 2013 have already been sold to Sky, the Government could try to persuade Sky to offer free coverage of, say, one day’s play or even broadcast one Test match free to air. Sky might be more amenable to this suggestion if the Government made it clear that the alternative would be the Ashes returning to the A-list in 2017.
The ECB would probably resist this. Understandably, it wants Murdoch’s millions. But for Test cricket to remain popular in this country, the English game needs to be accessible as well as successful. Further, as cricket will be receiving £37.8 million from Sport England between 2009-13 – more public money than any other sport – it also has an obligation to be rather more accessible to the public.
This is not to say that every Test of every series should be given over to free to air TV channels or that this country should have the same sort of set up as they do in Australia. Undeniably, pay-per-view companies such as Sky have revolutionised television coverage of sporting events from football to golf. However, not everyone can afford to pay for their coverage and may resort to dubious websites to watch sport online.
Although the 2009 Ashes series has been popular, this has not been on the same scale as 2005 when everyone was able to follow just about every over of every Test match live on television. For how much longer will Test cricket have the capacity to grip the imagination in the same way if it does not have a larger audience? How do we expect first-class cricket to remain popular if access to it is denied to the vast majority of the British public? Football and other sports are still shown (if infrequently) on free-to-air TV. So why shouldn’t cricket be afforded the same protection?l
