Cricket's worrying television ratings slide has continued into the home one-day internationals, with audience numbers falling 23 per cent from last summer in another setback for Cricket Australia's ambitions for a big increase in its next domestic broadcast rights deal.
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Cricket Australia's decision to schedule the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy series between Australia and New Zealand in early December backfired in terms of eyes on television screens on international broadcaster Channel Nine, OzTAM ratings reveal.
The three matches, all won by Australia and featuring some brilliant batting from David Warner and Steve Smith, recorded a five-city metro average of 936,000 for the prime-time evening session, down from 1.215 million for the first three ODIs of last summer between Australia and India, while crowds have also been underwhelming.
Those matches, also all won by Australia in a series in which Steve Smith's world No.1-ranked men prevailed 4-1, were played a month later in mid-January but the size of the drop-off in ratings has not been missed by industry figures following similarly significant ratings decreases for Australia's Test series against South Africa.
They included a 23 per cent fall in east-cast prime time for the Perth Test and an average 20 per cent slide for each evening of the pink-ball Test in Adelaide.
While the opening night of the Women's Big Bash League on Channel Ten posted the highest ratings for a game since the competition launched last year – a capital city audience of 286,000 tuned into Sydney Thunder's loss to Melbourne Stars at North Sydney Oval – the men's international numbers have not been what CA would have been hoping in a summer leading into a new round of broadcast rights negotiations for the rights to televise cricket from 2018 to 2023.
CA plans to go to market in the new year and while long-time rights holder Nine is keen to continue broadcasting Australia's home internationals, as well as intending to bid for the Big Bash League, the network's chief executive Hugh Marks has already said it would be "uneconomical" to pay any more than they have in their existing deal.
Nine in 2013 agreed to dish out nearly $100 million for the rights to home Tests, ODIs and Twenty20 internationals, while Ten paid $20 million a year for the BBL in an overall rights package worth $590 million to CA over the five years.
The nosediving ratings this summer have done CA no favours in its hopes of a sizeable boost to the international portion of the next rights package, and led industry figures to predict that the governing body may end up delaying formal negotiations for the next deal.
That scenario wouldn't be favoured, though, by the networks themselves, who will be keen to lock away their content as early as possible.
A likely outcome is that CA will wait until after ICC meetings in February at which groundbreaking changes to the make-up of international cricket including a potential two-tier conference system for Tests and a league structure for ODIs and T20Is could be pushed through.
Such a revamp to the program stands to be beneficial to CA as a selling point for its rights, adding context to series such as the 50-overs contest just played against New Zealand.
CA's intention has been to finalise a new Asian broadcast deal before beginning the bidding process with local networks.
Broadcasting giants Star Sports and Sony will be the main contenders. They are duelling for the 10-year rights to the Indian Premier League, which could be sold for more than $4 billion.
