Cricket and Channel 7’s bitter battle

Cricket Australia and Seven are miles apart with the summer around the corner and are headed for arbitration. Or one party is.

Glenn Maxwell and Steve Smith in last year’s Big Bash

Seven West Media’s conflict with Cricket Australia shows no signs of easing with both parties arguing about an arbitration process the network is set to begin in Sydney on Tuesday.

Cricket Australia says it has received no notification about arbitration but the broadcaster claims it has been told verbally and in writing.

Relations between Seven and CA over the $492m free-to-air broadcast deal remain hostile despite claims the network has offered a 20 per cent discount on this year’s rights. The parties also disagree about whether a discount has been offered.

Sources say the two parties are still miles apart.

Last week Seven and Swimming Australia terminated their broadcast deal when the sports body could not deliver Olympic and Paralympic trial events.

Seven chief executive James Warburton launched a scathing attack on Cricket Australia’s executive, the Big Bash League and the value of the rights in late August.

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The network originally refused to deliver the full $25m instalment due in September but eventually wrote a cheque for the balance with an eye to beginning arbitration with its side of the contract fulfilled.

Seven pays $75m cash for the rights to the Test matches, women’s cricket and a share of both BBLs every summer.

The network claims cricket is in breach of its contract by delivering a product this summer that is not of equal quality to the previous year and threatened to walk away from the deal. Cricket dismisses the notion of a qualitative clause or the premise of the complaint. Talks and the offer of a reduction have smoothed the water with Foxtel but not Seven in recent weeks.

Seven indicated last month it would take the case to arbitration in 14 days if a deal could not be reached before then.

That 14-day period ended Friday and Seven is understood to be taking the matter officially to the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration.

Cricket Australia claims no knowledge of the process beginning Tuesday but the broadcaster says it has been told verbally and in writing.

Under the arbitration process, if both parties agree, experts would be appointed to assess the value of the contract after submissions.

Foxtel, meanwhile, is understood to be comfortable with the renegotiation process.

While cricket is critical to the cable and digital broadcaster, Seven does not need the sport as much. It is said the network has previously tried to offload the BBL.

Both broadcasters have been unhappy with the BBL in the first two years of the deal and were mollified by the commissioning of a report at the end of the 2019-20 summer which resulted in promises to improve the standard of the competition.

The broadcasters have been disappointed to discover little change to the status quo.

Cricket says it has freed three weeks at the end of the tournament where the best Australian players will be available to the franchises, but there is a suspicion the big names will be exhausted from life in a series of bubbles and choose to rest instead.

David Warner does not even have a BBL contract and broadcasters are worried the arrangements for this summer will see even fewer big names able to play in the tournament than usual.

The decision to hold the BBL in a series of bubbles, the first of which will be in Hobart, also does not sit well with the broadcasters who argue that it will come at the cost of parochial crowds. State associations, who receive sponsorship and gate money from the tournament, are also keen for the game to abandon the bubbles if they can.

Cricket is understood to have budgeted for $30m in biosecurity costs on top of lost gate revenue this summer and will be further hurt by any reduction in the rights.

Broadcasters are also upset that there is no official fixture despite the proximity to the start of summer — the women are in the middle of a series against New Zealand and played on Monday in Brisbane.

The pandemic has created havoc with programming and even the New Year’s Test is understood to have been shifted from its traditional start on January 3 to January 7.

The move is not unprecedented. In 2015 the match at the SCG was similarly delayed by the death of Phillip Hughes.

The summer is complicated by most of the big-name Australian and Indian players competing in the IPL which does not end until November 10.

Under the most recent plans the two groups of players would fly from the UAE to Brisbane where they would serve out a quarantine period while hopefully preparing for the white ball part of the summer which would commence around late November.

Those Indian and Australia would then need at least one practice game with a red or pink ball before the first Test which is expected to be December 17.

The calendar is so crowded Cricket Australia has controversially proposed to have a T20 side playing New Zealand at the same time the Test team takes on South Africa in February.