Cricket nuts would remember Javed Miandad’s kangaroo jump from the batting crease of the Sydney cricket ground during the 1992 World Cup India-Pakistan face-off as a reaction to Kiran More’s annoying appeals. Do you recall how early Indian viewers got up to catch the first ball of that action? 5.30am. The entire ODI World Cup in Australia-New Zealand was played either during sleeping hours or working hours in India. Those were times when cricket’s commercial worth was yet to be discovered.
Slowly, as Indian broadcast dollars became the lifeline of cricket’s world events, every subsequent India-Pakistan picture-perfect World Cup moment – from Sachin Tendulkar lofting Shoaib Akhtar over third man at Centurion in 2003 to Virat Kohli’s iconic back-foot straight six over Haris Rauf’s head at Melbourne in 2022 has been on Indian television in primetime. It will be factored in again when Kohli and Rauf resume battle on Sunday, so what if the next chapter of the storied rivalry plays out miles away in a brand-new pop-up stadium, one hour south of New York.
Disney Star’s US$ 3 billion for Indian eyeballs account for 90% of the International Cricket Council’s media rights earnings. On Indian TV, every India match of the ongoing T20 World Cup in USA-West Indies begins at 8pm.
For the rest of the world, it’s not anywhere as easy to follow their team’s fortunes. Sample the eight teams who have been seeded to make the Super Eight round. With Sky Sports contributing to ICC’s revenue chain, fans of defending champions England get to watch half their matches in the evening including the mega clash against Australia. Other matches are either in the afternoon or late night.
For those supporting 2021 winners Australia, fans would keep plenty of coffee handy to watch the action against old enemy England starting 3AM. For rest of the matches, when Mitch Marsh’s team will play it will be morning time in Australia. These timings show zero consideration for advertising slots. That’s because there are very few of them. The only way to watch the World Cup Down under is by subscribing to Amazon prime who have acquired live streaming rights. There were no takers for linear TV rights.
Similarly in neighbouring New Zealand, cricket fans have to wake up thrice for late night starts and make do with four afternoon games. To watch Aiden Markram’s side live, viewers in South Africa have to catch the action during office hours.
Being geographically close to India does not help fans in Sri Lanka. With no serious money coming from broadcasters there, most of Sri Lanka’s matches will be day-night affairs – that’s early morning back home.
After India, it’s viewers in Pakistan who get to see their team play at the best TV-friendly time zone. That’s down to television eyeballs again. Pakistan recorded 237 billion minutes of live viewing for the 2023 ODI World Cup, second best to India (422 billion) according to ICC data. Like India, cricket is the No 1 sport there. It’s also a simple matter of demographic advantage. Comparatively, UK recorded 5.86 billion minutes of live viewing, Australia 3.79 billion and South Africa 5.01 billion minutes.
But scheduling cannot entirely be designed for TV. On-ground atmosphere is as important to make the product attractive. Which is why even though cricket’s popularity has dwindled in the West Indies, the hosts play almost all their matches under lights for fans to bring calypso and reggae flavour to the stadiums.
PLAYING CONDITIONS PARITY
These commercial considerations make uniform playing conditions a tall order. As India, Pakistan and South Africa strategize for early morning starts, West Indies, Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka prepare for night matches. England’s match timings are a mixed bag. Add other variable such as the sub-standard pitches at New York – India and South Africa play 3 matches there – a level playing field is difficult to achieve.
“One of the hardest things to do is to finalise a match schedule for World Cups given the number of factors that go into that process from teams to commercial partners to broadcast to hosts to days of the week, teams for particular locations, the logistics to move the teams from venue to venue. There are numerous factors,” said Chris Tetley, ICC’s head of events in a recent media call. “The project gets harder when we have an event split over as many venues, countries and the geographical spread as we have for this event. It is done with all these factors in mind to get the best possible output we could.”
For teams expected to make an early exit after the first round, they have little say in scheduling. This week for example, cricket fans in Uganda woke up to news of the African nation registering their first ever World Cup win. In the business of cricket, prime time viewing incurs a heavy cost – currently, it’s worth US$ 3 billion.