The International Cricket Council (ICC) is today beginning the tender process for media rights in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh for its top-tier men’s and women's events through 2025.
This comes with cricket’s governing body having already tied up broadcast rights deals for its next cycle - albeit longer-term agreements in most of those cases - in major markets such as the UK (Sky), the US (Willow TV), India (Star Sports), Australia, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa (SuperSport).
The MENA rights deal - a four-year tie-up with Evision - was unveiled last week (February 1), with this latest tender following close behind. Evision will make ICC event matches available on the CricLife MAX channel on the StarzPlay streaming service.
The specific details of the new tender are as follows: in Pakistan, two packages are available, both covering linear TV and digital rights, with both packages also including men's and women's events.
In the other two markets, meanwhile, only one package is on offer, also including both TV and digital, and events from both the men's and women's games.
Bids must be submitted for the full two-year term, which is set to contain six major ICC events, three men's and three women’s.
Of those tournaments, the ICC Men’s Champions Trophy in 2025 will take place in Pakistan, while this year's Women's T20 World Cup is set to be held in Bangladesh.
The most recent major ICC event, the 2023 Men's Cricket World Cup in India, was covered live by PTV and ARY in Pakistan, Maharaja TV in Sri Lanka, and through T Sports and Gazi TV in Bangladesh.
Geoff Allardice, chief executive of the ICC, said: “We are delighted to be releasing the invitation to tender for media rights in three of cricket’s major broadcast markets in South Asia, namely Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, as we continue to build our team of broadcast partners who will take ICC events to more fans across the world.”
Interested parties should email iccmediarights2024-2031@icc-cricket.com to access the tender documents which are now available.
Other major cricketing markets in which no media rights deals are yet in place for the next cycle include the Caribbean and New Zealand.
Before the Evision deal, the most recent tie-up announced by the ICC was a 2024-27 deal in Australia with the Amazon Prime Video streaming service.
