ICC Offers Content Rights Tender For 12 Tournaments Across Nine Territories
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is inviting bids from interested parties to secure the digital content rights for 12 tournaments across nine territories.
The 2023 men’s Cricket World Cup in India is among several major events that form part of a digital content rights tender being launched by the sport’s global governing body and has issued a deadline of 29th August to submit bids, with an invitation to be issued by the ICC on 14th August.
In the new four-year rights cycle, the ICC intends to offer in excess of 20,000 individual clips, including match highlights, recaps, in-play key moments and other match and feature content delivering more than 500 hours of content to partners.
Interested parties are invited to bid for rights across a total of nine territories, including major cricketing regions such as Australia, the Indian subcontinent covering India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland, and also Sub-Saharan Africa.
Other territories include the Americas, which covers the US, Canada, Caribbean and South America, parts of Asia excluding the Indian subcontinent, mainland Europe, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
It is unclear what value the ICC holds for the rights, though it appears the body has seen an opportunity after experiencing exponential growth across the consumption of its digital content during its 2016 to 2019 rights cycle.
In a media release, the ICC said that it has registered record-breaking digital figures during the 2019 Cricket World Cup, clocking more than 4.6 billion views, with 3.6 billion via its own channels and a further billion ova the governing body’s official digital clip licensees.
“With such a unique set of rights available, we have already received tremendous interest from a range of potential partners spanning both traditional and new platforms, all of whom recognise the phenomenal reach of cricket in each market,” ICC chief executive, Manu Sawhney, said.
“We have set a high benchmark for our future events and are keen to partner with organisations who share in our ambition to continue to grow and deepen engagement globally in our great sport.”
The tender will include a digital content package for 12 international cricketing events through 2023, which also includes the 2020 men’s and women’s T20 World Cups in Australia, the 2021 men’s T20 World Cup in India, the 2021 women’s Cricket World Cup in New Zealand, and the 2021 and 2023 World Test Championship finals.
Other events in the package include qualifying matches for both the men’s T20 World Cup during 2019 and the men’s Cricket World during 2022, as well as the men’s Under-19’s T20 Cricket World Cup and Cricket World Cup tournaments to be held in 2020 and 2022, respectively.
