Sky Tv Blog

Cricket fans with Sky packages in their homes will be chuffed to hear that the Ashes will be staying on the satellite station rather than switching over to terrestrial television.

The government will announce today that they are scrapping Labour’s idea of showing Ashes cricket on free-to-air channels such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Instead the government will secure the right to watch Ashes matches until 2013 for anyone with Sky TV deals.

The Ashes series was recommended by a review last November to become a ‘crown jewel’ of the sporting world. It would have joined Wimbledon, the Grand National and the FA Cup Final as protected sporting events. If the review proposals had been secured as planned by Labour then all of those events would have been guaranteed to be shown on terrestrial TV. Other events which would have been safeguarded included the football World Cup and the Open golf tournament. The review, headed by ex-FA chief executive David Davies, suggested removing protection for the Epsom Derby horserace and the Winter Olympics.

The review has been rejected by the coalition government, however, meaning that Sky will now be free to bid for more sporting events in the future.

Sports minister Hugh Robertson said: “I fully support the principle of protecting major sports events for free-to-air coverage. But with digital switchover concluding in 2012, this will result in the widespread availability of a significantly increased number of television channels, many free-to-air.”

Sky has paid £264 million to show the Ashes matches until 2013

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Tags : ashes, cricket, freetoair, Sky Sports
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 9:16 am and is filed under Sky Sports.
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