The ECB has announced a new four-year broadcast rights deal with sports media company PERFORM to deliver live and on-demand coverage of England’s home international matches to fans in North America and the Caribbean.
The deal will see live and on-demand content made available to viewers across a number of devices, including Connected TV, PC, mobile and tablet, beginning with the NatWest T20 international against Sri Lanka on May 20 2014 in a summer that includes Investec Test Series against Sri Lanka and India, 10 Royal London ODIs and a NatWest T20 against India. The deal runs until 2017 and therefore includes the Investec Ashes Series in 2015, as well as England Women’s and Lions matches.
PERFORM has been ECB’s digital partner since 2010, streaming match and session highlights of international and domestic cricket through its ePlayer platform. The two organisations also collaborated in the live online streaming of the NatWest ODI between England Women and Australia Women in the 2013 Women’s Ashes Series, hosted on ECB’s YouTube channel.
David Collier, Chief Executive of ECB, said: “It is important for us to continue to increase the England cricket team’s global reach. The broadcasting agreements for the next contractual cycle will see an overall increase in revenues compared with the previous four-year period and this uplift owes much to the efforts of our commercial team. We are delighted to further develop our relationship with PERFORM who have been instrumental in our expansion of digital content.”
Oliver Slipper, Joint-CEO at PERFORM, added: “We have formed a strong working relationship with ECB since our first agreement together in 2010 and are delighted to extend this partnership to deliver coverage to a North American, Canadian and Caribbean audience.
"As we continue to build on our success in providing live online coverage of the world’s biggest sporting competitions, we look forward to enabling cricket fans across the globe to watch England sides in action.”