The moment Virat Kohli dropped his shoulder into Sam Konstas, you could almost hear the sound of television broadcasters rubbing their hands with glee.
Here was a moment that would ensure millions of people around the world stayed glued to their television for the next five days.
And while they would never publicly admit it, some in the Cricket Australia hierarchy would have had a smile too.
Off the field there is another “Test” being played around broadcast rights, and the Kohli-Konstas clash won’t hurt that one for the governing body of the game.
“This is undoubtedly the most watched Test series ever played in Australia,” Richard Ostroff, Cricket Australia’s Head of Broadcasting, tells The Roar.
“So that’s a big deal.”
A “big deal” is what sits behind this shadow game to the Test series, one that is already changing the way Australian cricket does business.
So much so that one expert believes Cricket Australia will soon earn as much broadcast revenue in India than it does at home.
The off-field ‘Test’ series
In 2022, Cricket Australia signed a reported $350 million ($US250m) deal with Disney Star for Australian cricket to be broadcast in India on Star Sports for seven years.
It’s by far the biggest television deal that Australian cricket has signed beyond its borders. According to multiple reports, the last rights deal for India with Sony ultimately ended up paying CA around $110 million for six years.
The new deal started before the 2023-24 season, but Ostroff knows this summer’s Border Gavaskar Trophy is the year that matters most – it will be the first non-Covid summer of India touring since their breakthrough series in 2018-19.
“Back then we had Sony, and six years ago the rivalry with India was big. But it’s not what it is today.”
Two consecutive test series wins in Australia has driven more Indian interest than ever before.
Another competitive series where the visiting broadcasters walk away happy with the experience while engaging the masses at home, will determine whether CA can hope to go to market for a bigger cheque next time.
Expectations are understandably high from Star Sports, and the mechanics of delivery are no easy task.
Sam Konstas ramps on day one of the fourth Test. (Photo by Morgan Hancock – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
Australia has two domestic television broadcasters for Test matches, and three radio broadcasters. When you add Star’s two separate productions (one in English and one in Hindi) – it adds up to seven television or radio productions going on at the one time.
Finding space for every broadcaster’s cameras, equipment, commentary boxes and studio positions, facilitating player interviews for all and keeping the peace between competitors makes for a pressure-filled seven weeks of action.
And then there’s the mass of humanity.
More than 300 production crew are working around matches day-to-day in addition to the teams of on-air talent across every broadcast, along with the written media, that are housed in media centres. This week at the MCG, that media centre has been bursting at the seams.
“It’s demanding,” Ostroff says.
“It used to be the Ashes as the most operational demanding, but the Star Sports operation is bigger than any of that. It’s the biggest television operation in Australian sport.”
The importance of that off-field performance should not be undervalued, it may well shape the finances of the sport in Australia.
Star power
The context for the switch from Sony to Star Sports is intriguing itself and was the perfect storm for Cricket Australia.
Star Sports put aside a stack of cash to regain the IPL broadcast rights just before the Australian rights went on sale. They got those broadcast rights, yet didn’t pick up the digital rights for the exploding T20 league which meant it suddenly had some leftover money, with the astonishing Indian victory in Australia in 2020-21 fresh in everyone’s mind.
Sony now had an unexpected competitor, and the price was driven up. Star Sports won the day; Cricket Australia made bank.
Yet there were also unintended bonuses for CA well beyond the dollar figure.
Star Sports has a much larger reach into India than its predecessor, and while the “most watched Test series” boast may sound like standard PR hyperbole, there’s science to the sizzle.
According to Cricket Australia, 90% of Indian cable TV customers have Star Sports. Last summer, even with the Indian national team not in Australia, officials couldn’t believe the numbers they were getting more than 8000 kilometres away.
Steve Smith celebrates after scoring a century at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. (Photo by Santanu Banik/Speed Media/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The BBL’s Indian audience trebled overnight due to the Star Sports reach. Despite the competition not featuring any Indian players, CA says more than 55 million Indians tuned in.
“Due to the Star deal, the BBL is now far and away the most watched sports league in Australia,” Ostroff says.
This would shock many Australian sports fans stuck in the domestic bubble.
Cricket is firmly ensconced in the “big three” of Australian sport, yet does not generate the same domestic rights, or saturation media coverage these days, as the AFL or NRL.
The AFL starts a seven-year $4.5 billion deal in 2025 ($643m per year), while the NRL is amid a five-year $2 billion contract ($400m per year). Cricket Australia started its domestic $1.5 billion contract over seven years ($216 million per year) this year with Foxtel and the Seven Network.
These figures tend to set the pecking order of sport in Australia. The AFL and NRL numbers increased last time, CA’s decreased slightly.
Yet the Star Sports deal highlights that the significant financial gap between cricket and those two winter leagues is closer when looking beyond Australian borders.
“It’s missed a bit,” Ostroff says.
When overseas rights are factored in, Cricket Australia’s broadcast revenue tops $300 million.
Future deals for the three sports are harder to predict.
Defying local and global trends
The new volatility of the sports rights market hit Australia this week with NewsCorp’s sale of Foxtel, including its sports streaming arm Kayo, to DAZN, a British-based streaming service owned by Ukrainian-born, Russian-raised and USA-residing billionaire Len Blavatnik.
On one hand this stabilises the financial position of a major rights partner for Australian sport’s Big three when it appeared to be bleeding money.
On the other hand, the fully domestic (AFL) and largely domestic (NRL) sports will now be reliant on a rights owner whose entire television business will not be reliant on those rights like Foxtel was for many years.
Just how the new owners value the deals they’ve inherited, next to others globally, is anyone’s guess.
That development aside, Australia’s godfather of broadcast rights intelligence Colin Smith believes the years of rights growth for the AFL and NRL appear to be hitting a plateau.
“The next round of rights for the AFL and the NRL will be tough,” he tells The Roar.
“Across the board it’s going to get harder (for Australian sports), because we only have a certain size of audience.”
He points to France’s Ligue One Football league, who hoped to reap $1 billion per season for its rights this year. Instead, on the eve of the season it was left with no broadcaster willing to pay the price. Eventually it settled for a cut-price figure, $400 million less than it forecast.
Hurricanes batter Ben McDermott hits out against Adelaide Strikers. (Photo by Sarah Reed – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
This is a global trend, only defied by the NBA and NFL in the US.
Domestically for CA, the market issues look the same. And despite predictions it will hit all of cricket, Smith believes the Star Sports deal is a signal that the rights party is not over in India yet.
“That’s why India is so attractive for Cricket Australia,” says Smith, who has advised all the major Australian sports on rights negotiations over the last 25 years. “Now they can get big rights figures there, they can milk it both ways.”
The $50 million from India per year represents almost a quarter of the domestic Australian rights figures. Smith believes those numbers will defy trends and grow significantly over the next few contract cycles.
“I could easily see Cricket Australia one day selling its TV rights in India for as much as what they do in Australia. The overall rights for the subcontinent, adding Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka … that could surpass the revenue CA gets domestically.”
The counter argument to that is 2024’s merger of Disney Star and Jio Cinema (a major Indian streamer that previously sat just behind Netflix, Amazon and Disney for streaming numbers in India). Some believe a new streaming giant that already owns a lot of cricket rights will diminish competitive tension for cricket and Cricket Australia to exploit deals in India.
Ostroff admits that the deal is a major shift for the landscape.
“They’re an enormous entity now. In India Jio and Star were the two dominant operators bidding against each other for digital rights and driving the price up,” he says,
However, that hasn’t got Cricket Australia pessimistic about a great Indian future. Ostroff remains bullish that linear growth can continue.
“This is the second year of the deal, so we won’t be going back to market until the end of the decade,” he says.
“Who knows what could happen between now and then? There will no doubt be one or two other new players pop up that might be bidding on rights, and others may fall away.
“That’s the nature of it at the moment and there’s a lot that can happen.
“Above and beyond all of that, we’ve got a really valuable product. Australian cricket is the stuff that people want to watch in India.”
Umpire Michael Gough speaks with Virat Kohli and Sam Konstas. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Strategy shift
Overseas rights were once handy extras. The change means Cricket Australia is unashamedly pitching for an Indian television audience.
“We want to position Australian cricket as the overseas sports content of choice for Indian cricket fans,” Ostroff says.
The Ashes series may have the unimpeachable historical importance, but Cricket Australia’s vision is that India v Australia matches are seen as what Ostroff calls “‘world cricket’s super heavyweight title fight.”
“We’ve got a lot more strategic around how we engage with the audience there and grow it. We need to show a longer-term commitment compared to the transactional approach of a flurry of activity every time we sell our TV rights.”
The governing body has been running events as virtual launches of the current series in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore through the year. They’ve brought together Star Sports, the Australian Government (who understand the trade advantages of using cricket as a common language), and a burgeoning group of businesses who want to unlock new markets.
“There are loads of Australian industries that are getting into India in a big way,” Ostroff says.
“The university sector, agri-business, resources, tourism … we’ve got this incredible platform for Australian growth industries to reach a massive audience in India.”
The BBL audience explosion is perhaps the greatest example.
Australian T20 teams scramble for sponsors in a saturated Australian sports market. Apart from the AFL and NRL, they must compete with events like the Australian Open tennis and F1 Grand Prix, and national teams and leagues across soccer, netball, basketball and rugby union.
That they can now go to market with an added 55 million Indian viewers is the ace in the pack when speaking to businesses that want to gain a foothold in the most populous country and fastest growing economy in the world.
“There’s no other sport that can do that,” Ostroff says.
An Indian-influenced expansion?
While many say CA bows to India too easily, the counter argument to that is, distinct from the dollar figures, embracing India is essential to cricket’s health in Australia.
And so far, the television deal has not come at any cost to a traditional Australian summer.
It’s just that India is now buying, in large numbers, the product that CA sells to its home market. No scheduling has changed to better suit the Indian television market.
“This is our home market; it’s always going to be prioritised,” Ostroff says.
“Prime time in India attracts the biggest audience and our time zone is different, but we’re lucky that pretty much all matches are played in the waking hours in India.”
“Our late afternoon is lunchtime in India. It’s not a bad time zone, we could be a lot worse.”
Sam Konstas celebrates his 50 on debut (Photo by Daniel Pockett – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
What the future looks like is more of blank canvas.
CA executives were pleasantly taken aback when those BBL viewing numbers landed last summer.
Currently digital ground signage is different in Indian television markets to what is seen in Australia, yet that may be the tip of the iceberg in terms of how to commercialise assets for Indian viewers.
It also adds a compelling factor to the proposed BBL/WBBL expansion.
BBL general manager Alastair Dobson told NewsCorp after last summer’s success that it “has given us an opportunity to look at what the future might look like and be bold around our ambitions for the Big Bash”.
Canberra has seen to be the favoured location of a new team, followed by New Zealand, Gold Coast and even Singapore, though Cricket Australia will not publicly speculate on which is their preferred option.
Yet, none of those additions would necessarily move the dial, beyond more content, with Indian audiences.
One that could, would be a second Western Australian team alongside the Perth Scorchers.
The three hours’ time difference compared to the eastern states of Australia means that Western Australian BBL games land in a much more lucrative Indian time zone. Matches that start at 6pm local time (and 9pm for Eastern Australia) creep into Indian prime time.
Start a little later and it has even more cache.
The Scorchers have been a league leader on the field (five titles in 13 seasons) and in the stands (highest average attendances in the BBL for the last six seasons), demonstrating the parochialism that the state has about its own teams.
A second WA team – perhaps a Fremantle team to mirror the AFL team divide – would theoretically double the number of games touching prime-time in India.
Smith thinks that this kind of activity will naturally open the door for a relationship that sees Indian players finally playing in the BBL regularly.
“I would suggest that the next deal that will be done between India and Australia will result in more Indians playing in the BBL and that will mean rights are more financially lucrative for Cricket Australia.”
CA’S new paradigm
The deal with Star Sports will also assist Cricket Australia in figuring out just how to engage with the first- and second-generation Indian community who increasingly make up Australian cricket participants and crowds.
There are almost a million Australians who are Indian born, a number that has doubled in the last decade. Soon India will surpass the United Kingdom as Australia’s biggest migrant group.
“We need to get better in connecting with that group,” Ostroff says.
“It has to inform the flavour of what we do for our traditional audience, because our traditional audience is changing.”
It’s indicative of a greater shift in philosophy from Cricket Australia. Its community is no longer just those that reside in Australia.
It’s conceivable that there are children being born in India today that will be playing for Australia in 25 years’ time.
“People grumble about India a lot and it does create challenges around managing the IPL and other things, but the alternative without India is that we’d be in a far worse position than what we are now.”
Critics say they CA kowtows to the IPL window, however Ostroff points out that supporting the BCCI pays off on the field, in player relations and for the CA goal of being India’s choice of overseas cricket.
“The top 10 players with the highest brand value of non-Indian cricketers in India, is dominated by Australians,” he says. “We prioritise giving our players permission to play IPL where possible, because it’s good for us too.”
If Australian players are in demand via their IPL exploits, so are Australin cricket broadcasts.
“It makes our players better and it benefits us.”
In CA’s strategy, what’s good for Australia is increasingly blurring with what’s good for India.
The cricketers are playing against the world, and the front office is selling to the world, not just the traditional Anglo-Australian market it once lived off.
If Ostroff and Smith are right, the only border that will matter in the future is the one the trophy is named after.
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