Here's all you need to know about Channel Seven-Cricket Australia Saga

The long-standing dispute between Cricket Australia (CA) and Australian TV network Channel Seven has now resulted in the latter filing a lawsuit to end the television rights with the national cricket board with immediate effect. Channel Seven, which has been enjoying the broadcast rights for cricket in Australia for a considerable amount of time, has reportedly made several allegations against Cricket Australia.

One of them is that CA has repeatedly breached its six-year media rights contract. Furthermore, the TV network is not at all convinced with the Big Bash League (BBL) broadcast as the tournament has struggled for ratings for a while. Therefore, Channel Seven has sought a court declaration that would grant them the authority to terminate the contract with CA to broadcast Tests and the BBL.

The strained business relationship between CA and Channel Seven

As Channel Seven has dragged Cricket Australia to court for terminating the TV broadcast deal, It is to be noted that both parties had mutually signed a media rights contract deal for six years in 2018 at an estimated sum of $450 million. As of now, the validity of the said contract is for two more years i.e. 2024.

For the unversed, cracks between both parties were formed in 2019 but, it was in 2020 that things reached a boiling point as there supposedly happened a disagreement between them during COVID-19 due to which all the global sporting activities had come to a standstill with events either being cancelled or postponed indefinitely.

According to reports, Channel Seven took Cricket Australia to an independent arbitrator and claimed that the network got massive cuts to their estimated A$82 million-a-year share of the A$1.18 billion deal signed alongside Foxtel in April 2018. However, after going through the case well, the arbitrator came to a clear conclusion that Channel Seven was originally supposed to get just a A$5 million discount of the A$70 million concession that they had been claiming.

Reports also state that Cricket Australia’s move of reviving BBL through various strategies like the overseas draft is taking the next TV rights deal into account when the cricket body’s current contractual deal with Channel Seven and Foxtel ends in 2024.

The eventual outcome of this dispute is hard to determine as of now with regards to how things will be settled, whether it will be settled mutually or will there be an out-of-court settlement, and what will be the financial aspects involved. All these factors make this case high-profile. Moreover, this is arguably one of the rarest instances where a network has sued a cricket body for not honoring the contract along with multiple other reasons.

The differences between both parties seemingly took an ugly turn during the 2018-19 season which could not be resolved and headed towards a crisis point. Seven had expressed disappointment at CA for scheduling the T20I series before the Test series during India’s all-format bilateral tour down under between November 2018 to January 2019.

The professional disputes due to COVID-19 included the postponement of the ODI series against the West Indies, and New Zealand and a postponement of a one-off Test match against Afghanistan that was scheduled to be held in Hobart in November last year.