PCB in broadcast rights deals with ICC.TV and Australia's Foxtel

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) governing body has entered into a 15-month broadcast deal with Foxtel, the prominent Australian pay-TV broadcaster.

The arrangement, which runs until April next year, gives Foxtel exclusive Australian rights to cover Pakistan’s various home international series up until that point, including the test series against Australia in March - the first tour of Pakistan by that national side since 1999.

The deal also gives Foxtel rights to show the next two editions of the Pakistan Super League (PSL), the top-tier men’s domestic Twenty20 competition held annually, with the 2022 PSL starting later this week.

Meanwhile, ICC.TV, the over-the-top streaming platform run by the International Cricket Council (ICC) in collaboration with Endeavor Streaming, and OTT site Tapmad TV, have secured rights to the next two editions of the PSL in all territories (worldwide) without existing deals.

The Foxtel agreement means matches will air on both the linear Fox Sports pay-TV channels, as well as on Kayo, Foxtel’s live streaming service.

Foxtel takes over from BeIN Sports, the Qatar-based international pay-TV broadcaster, and from Tapmad TV, as providing coverage of the PSL to an Australian audience.

This deal adds to the other international broadcast arrangements that have been agreed by the PCB in recent times - with Sky and the UK and New Zealand, SuperSport in sub-Saharan Africa, Willow TV in North America, Sony across the rest of South Asia, and Etisalat in the Middle East and North Africa.

Australia’s first tour of Pakistan in 23 years (with Pakistan playing ‘home’ series for much of the last decade in the United Arab Emirates) will run from March 3 to April 2 and will comprise three tests and three one-day internationals.

The ICC.TV and Tapmad TV deal, meanwhile, gives those two providers rights to the PSL in a wide range of countries, covering mainland Europe, South America, and large swathes of central and east Asia.

Domestically, the linear TV rights to the 2022 and 2023 PSL lie with public-service network Pakistan Television and satellite channel ARY, which were allocated these rights earlier in January after submitting a joint bid.

The domestic live-streaming rights, meanwhile, were awarded to Daraz, the Singapore-based technology conglomerate owned by Alibaba Group.

Both the Foxtel and the ICC.TV deals start with the first match of the 2022 PSL, which takes place tomorrow (January 28) as the Karachi Kings take on the Multan Sultans.

In terms of cricket, Foxtel also holds live and exclusive domestic rights to almost all home internationals played by Australia’s men’s and women’s teams in a deal running to 2023 and also has an arrangement with the ICC covering major global events and World Cups, running through next year.

ICC.TV, meanwhile, struck a deal last September to cover the 2021-22 home Australian summer across multiple emerging markets for cricket.

All Australia’s Ashes futures against England (both men’s and women’s), as well as series' against India and Sri Lanka, are being covered by ICC.TV in markets including Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and China in Asia, and both Germany and the Netherlands in mainland Europe.

ICC.TV will also provide coverage of all ICC-organised second-tier national team events and qualifying tournaments worldwide (except in the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia) for the next two years.

These events include qualifying campaigns for the men’s T20 World Cup 2022, the men’s Cricket World Cup 2023, and the women’s T20 World Cup 2023.