Cricket Australia’s new world view extends beyond razzamatazz and to the core of the modern sports game – broadcast rights.
Earlier this week they announced a partnership with UK based consultancy Initiative Futures. The company will aim to help CA increase sponsorship returns but also has enjoyed success helping sporting federations maximise the sale of their products to broadcasters.
Cricket Australia’s current rights deals expire next year and it will enter the marketplace buoyed by billion dollar paydays to AFL and rugby league in the past 18 months.
So why does cricket feel the need to look outside of Australia for consultants?
“One of the ways I’d characterise Australia is it’s a market place that’s drastically undersupplied with regards to option in terms of research agencies,” Kevin Alavy, Managing Director of Initiative Futures Sport + Entertainment, tells me.
“Clearly it’s a very important sports market, sport’s incredibly popular within the national culture, and yet there are very few options for rights holder and sponsors.
“If there’s any marketplace that is characterised by unmet demands on one hand and undersupply on the other it will tend to be a market where there will be a lack of product development and things can be behind the times, because, for those existing agencies, where’s the incentive for them to invest in innovation?
“By bringing an external perspective [from] other countries, where there’s a far more competitive and healthy sports research industry we can bring the best to Australia and transform the way research is perceived and used and valued and help to drive the overall value of the Australian sports industry.”
It’s happening in other Australian sports too. AFL club Western Bulldogs hired leading US digital media firm row27 Studios to help it create an online fan engagement experience for the club’s supporters next year.
The company’s creative director and co-founder Jonathan Dusing was a speaker at the recent Sport is Fantastic conference in Sydney – where he met the Bulldogs’ Nick Truelson.
Rapt Australian sports business leaders listened to fan engagement and CRM ideas from key officials at Manchester City, Chelsea, Seattle Sounders and more.
The conference organiser is Simon Arkwright, managing director of the NZ-based Sports Research Group and match maker to the stars of sportsbiz.
“The reasons Australians go offshore is a positive one,” he says. “They’ve got ambitions to be, at worst, right up there with the best in the world. As well as educate themselves, they want to calibrate themselves and validate what they’re currently doing.”
He says it makes sense that there are more ideas, more experience, abroad.
“There are about 2,500 professional clubs in America and well over 1,000 stadiums,” he says. “It’s a bigger market so a number of agencies can co-exist and go after their own niches and get expertise within that niche and that opens up opportunities for Australian organisations to take advantage of that.
“From a conference point of view there’s a definite thirst of knowledge from what they perceive to be the powerhouses of the US and UK.
“The NZ and Australian responses are quite different. The NZ approach is ‘you are from overseas; tell me what you know and I will listen and try to apply it to my situation’.
“The Australian approach is more ‘you are from overseas, I respect you must be an expert, but don’t tell me what you know, just solve my problem’.
“It’s a blunt Australian way but basically Australians want their problems solved – they will try to get it sorted domestically and if not available they’ll go offshore.”
Tony Harper is editor and co-founder of Sports Business Insider website, an online resource showcasing views, news and trends for the growing Australian sportsbiz industry, and soon to start a media services division. Look out for Tony’s regular contributions as a new blogger to SmartCompany on all matters sports business-related. Follow Tony on Twitter: @toneharper.
