England & Wales Cricket Board CEO Tom Harrison has "dealt a potentially fatal blow to the chances of Test cricket ever returning to free-to-air" TV, according to Jonathan Liew of the London TELEGRAPH. Despite a "widespread clamour among fans and administrators" for some form of int'l cricket to return to terrestrial TV, Harrison indicated that such a move "would not be beneficial for the national game, and said that in any case the medium was becoming increasingly irrelevant." Sky Sports has "owned the exclusive rights to England cricket matches" since '06, and its current deal lasts until '19. Last month the ECB "met with a number of terrestrial broadcasters to gauge their interest in the sport, and explore avenues for restoring some sort of cricket to free-to-air television." But those talks "proved inconclusive," and as he outlined his vision for promoting the game over the next few years, Harrison was "clear that terrestrial television played a negligible part in that strategy." Harrison: "Sky have been a great partner for English cricket. Going forward, we need to be very careful about the way in which this argument is understood. Is there a role for terrestrial television post the current deal with Sky? Terrestrial is becoming, frankly, less relevant every single year in the context of how people consume media. I don't think we solve all our participation concerns by terrestrial television" (TELEGRAPH, 5/16).
