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Nine secures rights to World Cup -but snubs Women’s cricket.

Nine commercial decision for Men's cricket sends Women's games behind paywall.

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Nine has secured broadcast rights to both the 2022 T20 World Cup and 2023 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup.

The Men’s T20 World Cup begins on October 16 with Australia.

Nine’s Director of Sport, Brent Williams, said: “Any cricket World Cup is a premium event on the international calendar and we’re excited to be the free-to-air home of the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia and the 2023 World Cup which will be held in India.

“Nine has a long and proud history with cricket and we look forward to that continuing with all Australian and key matches of these prestigious events being broadcast across Nine’s platforms.”

But the the Women’s World Cup, which gets underway in New Zealand later this summer, will instead be streamed exclusively on Foxtel and Kayo.

“Nine’s sub license agreement with Foxtel only includes rights to the Men’s T20 World Cup,” a Channel 9 spokesperson confirmed.

Australian wicketkeeper Alyssa Healy told reporters from Adelaide Oval on Sunday, “Not having it on free-to-air, it kind of excludes a fair chunk of our population who don’t want to pay or can’t afford to pay for subscription TV.

“It’s a little bit of a slap in the face to say we’re not commercially viable … it’s a little bit hard to take in that regard.

“With fans unable to travel, viewerships is probably more relevant than bums on seats right now.”

Sarah Styles, the Director of the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation, posted to Twitter: “Absolutely and utterly the wrong call by Channel 9.”

Cricket journalist Melinda Farrell tweeted: “Well this is disappointing, to say the least. NZ’s border restrictions means few fans and journalists will travel to the WWC and now this. Good job FOX and Kayo are committed to it, cos that’s the only way it can be watched in Aus.”

Source: FOX Sports.

12 Responses

  1. Healy kinds of ignores that in the Australian summer the womens ODIs and T20 games are on FTA TV, while the Mens limited over games are Kayo/Foxtel exclusives. It’s not a matter of equality or one being better than the other, it’s just that different TV rights end up with different results.

    And like it or not, commercial questions are always going to come into it. Then mens and womens tournaments are different events, with different viewerships, and that has an impact. Womens sport is getting lots of legs up to try and increase it’s popularity, and that’s a good thing that has helped it come into the mainstream in many ways. But slowly but surely it has to find a way to compete in the free market.

    Kayo and streaming TV is pretty popular and accessible these days too. Spend $25 for a month of kayo, then cancel again. Affordable for most I would have thought

  2. At least they have learned that if Australia wins a major tournament but it wasn’t on FTA, then few people know or care. How many people remember (or even knew about) that picture at the top? It was so disrespectful to the men’s team to not even show the Final.

    However, let’s stop sacrificing one sport for another. The people making the deals should be saying that it is both or neither. To answer a previous comment, the Women’s Ashes (so far just in the T20 stage) has had one match completely lost to rain, and one of the other games was rain-delayed to the point when viewers probably switched to one of the other great options for women’s sport that day – tennis, ironwomen/men, AFLW, and soccer – all playing simultaneously.

    How long before the adminstrators realise that paywalls will reduce their sport to a second-rate, non-spectator sport. It is time to review the antisyphoning law, and make it do what it was designed to do.

  3. Why on Earth this hatred of Nine for not buying something they don’t want? Only Men’s matches in Australia or NZ or against England are on the anti-syphoning list, and a lot of stuff on it never airs on FTA anyway. The ABC, SBS, Seven or Ten passed on the Women’s World Cup too. And since they have Kayo have decided to stream it free as a promotional thing.

    1. Something that one of the readers has mentioned but David has not listed in the article ,is there a reason for this David ,perhaps you didn’t have the full story at the time you posted it.

  4. Disgraceful that the WWC isn’t shown in 9 Platforms. Instead women’s games are shown behind a paywall which is a disgrace! Last year I want to watch the t20 games on 9, but CA says that all games are exclusive to pay tv.

  5. It’s not a good look to not have the tournament on free-to-air. The women’s league is very much included as part of cricket nowadays. It’s more popular than it has ever been. It would also likely get more ratings than what is regularly scheduled on Nine multichannels.

  6. ““Absolutely and utterly the wrong call by Channel 9.””
    It is a pity for women’s sport, but perhaps the advertisers and shareholders of Nine Entertainment disagree. Presumably the decision was made on commercial not ideological grounds. The ratings for the Womens Ashes has been woeful – perhaps that was the sealer for Nine.

  7. “…every [Women’s] match will be streamed on Kayo Freebies, meaning cricket fans can watch all the action in New Zealand without a paid subscription….”

    can’t leave that out…. but it sounds better if we just throw nine under the bus, and make it out people have to pay….

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