CRICKET Australia will dip its toes into the water in the Melbourne and Sydney Tests, before plunging headlong into a $200 million gamble to take over the running of international cricket in Australia.
Previously the game has been run by the states, and the various associations have taken the frontline profits and losses when international matches come to town, but the parent body is looking to buy out and control those games.
The Boxing Day and New Year's matches against Sri Lanka will be run from CA's Melbourne headquarters with Cricket NSW and Cricket Victoria given a guaranteed sum regardless of whether the games are washed out, ignored or packed to the rafters.
It is a nervous time for cricket administrators, although they are publicly bullish. There were crowds of fewer than 3000 people a day for the gripping final two days of the Hobart Test.
The Big Bash League, which The Weekend Australian recently revealed had budgeted for a $10.56m loss this year, is tracking badly and expected revenue streams have not eventuated.
BBL crowds are down 30 per cent on last year and ratings - while still good for pay television - are also significantly lower.
The competition's nadir was reached at ANZ Stadium on Thursday night when 4101 people attended - a historically low figure for the revamped league and only marginally worse than the 4329 who attended a washed-out game in Perth earlier in the month.
The BBL has lost more than $20m over two years, with the money being gambled against a new broadcast deal in 2013.
The BBL rights currently owned by Fox Sports will be sold - ideally in an auction - at the same time as the other Test and ODI international matches currently broadcast by the Nine Network.
The Weekend Australian understands that Seven West Media, which it was hoped would push the current rights holders into overstretching, has developed cold feet and will not make a significant bid, although this could not be confirmed. Test match cricket enters any negotiation hobbled by government regulation and unable to attract what it believes is its true value.
Cricket Australia argued unsuccessfully to the government's 2009 Anti-Siphoning Review that the anti-siphoning legislation dramatically discounted the sort of broadcast deals cricket could negotiate because of its protected status. All free-to-air networks are in a worse financial position than when the last, $315m, seven-year broadcast deal was signed with Nine.
Despite declining ratings and crowds, the BBL will attract a far bigger rights deal than the lesser product that was sold last time.
On the live cricket front, the Sydney and Melbourne Tests are a trial run for the parent body before it locks in a four-year guarantee to all states, and at this stage that looks to be a $200m investment - or an 18 per cent increase in distributions across the four previous years.
Mike McKenna, architect of the revamped Big Bash and executive general manager of operations at Cricket Australia, denies that either the T20 tournament or revenue guarantees are a gamble.
"When you look at the history of revenue growth in Australian cricket, particularly at this time when we are about to sign a new media rights deal, what this does is not increase risk for Cricket Australia - it just makes us that more efficient as a business and there will be direct benefits, plus we will be able to spend the money better," he told The Weekend Australian.
McKenna says that acting as one company frees the associations to focus on their strategic imperatives while Melbourne headquarters runs the business.
"States and Cricket Australia can now spend our time focused on the things that are our specialties," he said.
"The risk is eliminated for them and when you are Cricket Australia running all international cricket then you can balance that risk. If we have a good match in Brisbane and a poor one in Sydney no one is going to be worse off or better off. The states get their guarantee and we balance the risk across a number of years."
The risks to states have never been more obvious than this year. Queensland Cricket has battled a financial storm that saw it borrow money from Cricket Australia and negotiate a bank overdraft following a $2m loss last year.
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