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Business of TV Sport
Sportel Monaco 2011

Good audiences, recovering ad market raise hopes for Ashes bidding

The CSI agency, which is selling the UK free-to-air highlights for cricket’s Australia-England Ashes series this winter, is hoping that a revival of the UK’s commercial television market and strong viewing figures for the previous Ashes tour will generate some competition for the rights.
ITV this week reported an 18-per-cent rise in net advertising revenue for the first six months of the year and said that its coverage of this year’s Twenty20 Indian Premier League had performed well (see ITV newsline). Days earlier newspaper mogul Richard Desmond, the new owner of commercial broadcaster Five, had promised to double the channel’s share of the advertising market and invest a further £100 million a year on programming. Five currently shows highlights of England’s home international matches. Public-service broadcaster BBC is also thought to be interested.

The highlights rights give terrestrial broadcasters a limited window in which to show up to an hour of highlights each day. Programmes must start after 10pm but must not clash with any of the live coverage shown by pay-television broadcaster BSkyB, which will start a couple of hours later. The bid deadline is August 31.

BBC2’s highlights coverage of the 2006-07 Ashes tour, with programmes starting after 11pm, drew a creditable average audience of 651,000 viewers and a seven-per-cent share, according to TV Sports Markets data. The 2006-07 highlights were sold as a wider package that included the live radio rights and some online rights. Online rights this time are held exclusively by BSkyB.