Spark promises a 'fresh look' to New Zealand cricket coverage, working out details

Thursday, 10 October 2019

Spark says viewers should expect a 'fresh look' when it takes over the broadcast of New Zealand cricket.

Spark Sport has won the rights to broadcast New Zealand cricket for six years, it was announced on Thursday in Auckland.

Sky Sport holds the rights for all domestic cricket until mid-way through next year, but when that deal ends in April 2020 Spark Sport will be the officials rights partner for all cricket matches played in New Zealand.

All Black Caps and White Ferns games, all men's and women's Super Smash games and the Ford Trophy one-day final will be streamed on the Spark platform.

**READ MORE:

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* Rugby World Cup: Spark Sport offers tips on how customers can improve their streaming service**

A spokeswoman for Spark said it would bring a 'fresh look and feel to the coverage of the cricket'.

That would include an 'engaging commentary team, world class decision-review systems, team and individual analysis and on-screen graphics'.

Commentators have yet to be confirmed.

'The advantage of a streaming platform is that we can make more content available because we don't have the restrictions of a linear channel. This will be the first time that there will be live coverage available of every single Super Smash match – New Zealand has never had this before – which means that fans can watch all of their team's matches. Plus, we expect to enhance the coverage of women's cricket.

'Spark Sport will give cricket fans access to a range of content including educational and coaching pieces, fan engagement content and review shows. Plus, Spark Sport will make available a range of highlights programmes on a free-to-view and paid basis.'

She said Spark was still working through the process of confirming its production partners for the contract.

'Our team, while relatively newly formed, contains a wealth of experience from local and international broadcasting. In addition, we will look to partner with an experienced production company to work with us on this exciting new project. We are very fortunate to have two world-class production providers based here in New Zealand.

'Plus, the New Zealand live production market is a freelance market, which allows us to bring in the best talent to support us on this project. We'll be looking to appoint an executive producer for cricket in due course to help bring together our plans.'

Viewers have complained of streaming problems with Spark's Rugby World Cup coverage, but broadband providers were confident about delivering the cricket.

'Our network is built to give our customers a high quality streaming experience,' said Taryn Hamilton, general manager of Orcon.

'Even the Rugby World Cup streaming peak volumes pale in comparison to the day-to-day volume of Netflix, YouTube etc. The duration of an event like cricket is not an issue. Customers will however likely need to be on an Unlimited plan, which the vast majority of our customers are already on. A test match would use in the ballpark of 80GB of data.'

A spokeswoman for 2degrees said it would do its usual forecasting so that it had the necessary network capacity to deal with the stream.

Craig Young, chief executive of the Telecommunications Users Association, said there were still some issues to resolve.

'As we have seen from the Rugby World Cup, the fact that Spark has been using a streaming platform out of the United States has caused some issues. I think they have that sorted now but that means the technology is still off-shore. Maybe this is the driver to bring something like that into New Zealand,' he said.

'The other thing for consumers is this is another platform to watch sport. It's not the international games. That will still be on Sky. Cricket fans will need to have two subscriptions.

'We are seeing an increase in the number of people with unlimited broadband. But we're not seeing that in fixed wireless. If we want to watch a sport, and watch high-quality streaming for eight hours a day, then we are going to need decent data caps.'