2017 Ashes on BT SPORT

England’s cricketers were not the only ones celebrating an Ashes win on Sunday night — so were BT Sport, who have seized the rights to the 2017-18 series Down Under from arch-rivals Sky in a major coup.
In a move that demonstrates BT will challenge Sky strongly on the cricket field as well as on the football pitch, the network have secured the UK contract for Aussie home matches from Cricket Australia for the next five years.
It is believed to be costing them around £70million a year.


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SPORT on DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
23-Aug-2015 @ 21:09

£70m a year cannot be right at all - that's more than the England rights.

EDIT: Seems the current Sky Sports deal is worth £50m over 4 years, so I suspect this is £70m over the full contract, not per year.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/43a55d3c-4259-11e5-9abe-5b335da3a90e.html#axzz3jfniL6IN

Nice to see the Daily Mail have journalists and sub-editors capable of ferretting out the promotional language and triumphalism out of corporate press releases before publishing their story.

Exciting news! Also fitting the biggest fan of BTS broke this story to the forum.

They've revised the figures to £80m and £16m a year.

The last ashes series down under saw highlights going out on Pick TV, which is on freeview and also owned by Sky. With this deal, would it be possible that Channel 5 may be favourites for any FTA highlights?

One other thing, will Sky still have their daily "The Verdict" but without any action?

BT Sport Showcase would be the obvious choice.

Does a channel that isn't on a PSB-lite mux count?

It's on the Arquiva muxes, as Pick TV is and seems the obvious choice, though of course they could sell on if they wish too. Not sure if C5 have ever shown any overseas cricket highlights - Ashes wise 2007 was on the BBC IIRC, then 2011 on ITV4 and 2013 on Pick TV.

BT aren't going to be that daft, they'll get the highlights too, I presume as these matches are in Australia that the temptation would be to take Nine Network's coverage with Mark Nicholas as anchor for all the non-England matches and then concentrate on the England series with their own pres. It wouldn't surprise me to see some TMS people transfer across to do that. Jonathan Agnew would be a coup as lead.

I wouldn't bet on it. Jonathan Agnew presented the last BBC WC cricket tv coverage and absolutely despised the medium, which is why he has turned down numerous tv offers since then.

Not sure how Sky cover the non-England games but I assume in most cases they'd just take the commentary rather than the presentation, with the program beginning as the commentary does. Of course there is the issue of how you handle the breaks if that's the way you go, plus any delays in play.

The biggest value in this deal is probably actually the Big Bash League - that creeps into daytime hours thanks to the evening games and they're easy to repeat later in the day too. The test games are essentially overnight filler, and £80m is a lot for overnight filler.